Wasn't "Alf" the little hairy alien of mid-70's fame? :( Yup, another old fart here too, lol!Back on topic:Ryan, you might want to go ahead and make sure your defaults are set in your bios anyway. In my experience one glitch can lead to another and I don't think you stated that you actually did make sure the default settings in the BIOS had been restored (only that you held down the power button after entering the BIOS settings, if I am interpreting your statements correctly, albeit literally).Are you sure it wasn't the reset button that you pushed and held down?Best Regards Gents.p.s. I stand ready to be corrected, hehe. :( :(

I didnt change anything in the BIOS, I just went in there, and thought I might as well turn off the PC. I held the power button (my reset button is really tiny) and it acted like the restart button - it was kinda odd...Anyway, I did not reset defaults, because I checked today and date/time were still correct

While both of you guys are correct, in the pure sense, about the POST definition, as it applies to Micros / PCs, that is Not the only way that word, mnemonic / symbol is used. And it Not the way is used / referred to, in this case.The POST, as described / referred to by the OP, is Not the one that you guys define. Read his original message carefully, he is already gone way past it, he gets a Display

Micros/PCs are precisely what we are referring to. In this case "press Del to enter bios and reset defaults" indicates that the PC never got past the BIOS, and that message is delivered from the BIOS. We're not talking about a BIOS crash, just an invalid parameter somewhere. And whatever POST meant in the 70's (I was there too writing CPM OS code on my Altair S100) the current definition is Power On Self Test. Fred

I think it could very well be the battery. It could also be that you need to reseat your memory and check your hard drive connections. Im not sure what else might cause that.If it happens again, reseat everything.

Hi Fred and everyone.It is not likely that you will ever get it. This is for the benefit of others.POST gets executed Before the main BIOS starts. It's just a series of beeps and there is no need for Display, Memory access etc. Altair by the way, was not considered a PC, that started with Apple, and was about two years after the Micros in a box. started, and about 4 years, or more, after Microprocessors like 4004, 8008 were becoming obsolete and 8080 started to get going. For the OP. Enable your OS view, as I described before, and you can also try to create Boot log file, on cold start >F8>Advanced Options> Enable boot log.., it will generate a "ntbtlog.txt", that you can examine later and diagnose problems. TV"Micros/PCs are precisely what we are referring to. In this case "press Del to enter bios and reset defaults" indicates that the PC never got past the BIOS, and that message is delivered from the BIOS. We're not talking about a BIOS crash, just an invalid parameter somewhere. And whatever POST meant in the 70's (I was there too writing CPM OS code on my Altair S100) the current definition is Power On Self Test."

Hi Fred and everyone.It is not likely that you will ever get it. This is for the benefit of others.POST gets executed Before the main BIOS starts. It's just a series of beeps and there is no need for Display, Memory access etc.

I do get it, and you are right. Even though I know better I was wrongly implying the POST to be more than it actually is.However my point was that the OP did get a display that was generated by the BIOS, not the operating system.The "Press Delete..." message does not come from Windows and the problem cannot be fixed from within Windows.Fred out

I see that you are running Vista 64, if this is the first time you got an incomplete Boot, you amongst the luckiest. It's not likely that you will have a catastrophic crash, in the immediate future, but Back everything up, if you have not already. TV

Would Windows XP help?

hahaha - yeah if I had a copy of Win XP x64 I probably would have installed it in the first place. I'm sorta hoping that Win7 will be decent and become the new OS of choice.