so I guess I may as well junk this computer out? I do not know the first thing that they are talking about in that article,, BIOS and all that is total mud to me,, remember I am 73 and only been playing with computers for about 5 years, mainly just surfing the net and into some forums. Unfortunately I did not grow up with these things,,

Hate to get a new one as I dont like Vista,, I grew up on XP ,, lol

ahhh I am sorry for all of this, but as you can see from what LPChip just said, looks like I have a piece of junk in a box,,lol unless you come up with something. I will patiently await any further word form you my Friend, and thanks for all you have done. In the mean time i will play with the other XP to see if it will work on that one. Just been so convienient for me to have 2 XP computers in that I could move back and forth some of the graphic things, ie; PSP9 and Animation 3 graphic programs. can do a tuturoal on one while reading hopw to do it on the other one. Oh well,, such is life in the big city I guess,,, lol

No, not at all!

Junking your computer is not an option in my opinion, because I still think it can be fixed somehow. There are always worst case scenarios, and in this case, that probably means reinstalling windows. We'll get you through! Don't worry.

I merelly gave that link as a reference to everyone that wants to help, with the hope that you might read something and then say, oh but I've seen this too. Sometimes giving information even while not understood entirelly by the person that has the problem can still trigger something that they recognise.

Lets try something different here.

Are you able to access the BIOS?

In order to do that restart the computer and see if the screen says anything like: Press DEL to enter setup, or F12 = Setup, or F10, or F2 or Alt-S (these are common keys to use)

It should at some point show you a menu that you haven't seen if you had not pressed the keys, and in many cases it will be written on the screen what key you must press. If you see a nice logo during the startup, press ESC to get to the normal boot screen with the text for entering setup (usually located at the bottom of the screen).

If you have found the bios menu screen, can you describe to me what it looks like? That way, I can look up the menus and see where certaion options are.

If you can, tell me what the name of the bios is (like AMI Bios, AWARD, Trend Micro) and optionally a version number.

OK you mean at the bottom of the screen? it only shows up for a second, not even enough time to see everything, if that is what your talking about then what should I click on? you want me to push the "escape" key when that page comes up?

Can you describe me what you see when you start your computer? I'm interested in the first thing you see.

I'm aiming at a screen that looks something like this: http://images.tomshardware.com/2007/...ios_qx9770.png