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I don't actually know whether that title is right, you see a couple of days ago my p.c was working fine. I was messing about 1 day in the BIOS settings looking for a way of overclocking my machine. I went downstairs leaving the BIOS screen open, and my little sister :@ Started messing around in this screen (Shes 4).. I returned in time to see part of the message that flashed up before it died.. It partly read something along the lines of... ''The value you have changed.. computer won't boot up past startup screen... BIOS settings changed'' I didn't quite catch the rest of the message, and now everytime I try to fire up my machine i get nowhere, it just stops on the PackardBell screen, nothing I do works, I hit ESC to swap screens to see what's booting up.. and it tells me it's counting my physical memory and that it's 'ok'. I hit F2 for system BIOS and it just doens't listen, carries on with the PackarBell screen, Hitting F8 doesn't work either, I've tried rebooting through the c.d but i can't get the computer to load far enough. I'm thinking something in the BIOS has been changed therefore hindering the processor, BIOS or something i'm none to familiar with from booting. I need some help pronto on this one as i can't go without the computer because it's used for work too. I'm running Windows XP Pro, anything else you need to know, dont desitate to ask. I've got appx 42 minutes left on the computer i'm using! Thanks... I'll give my mobile number out to anyone who thinks they can help me step by step. :D

hi, I'm just trying to install windows XP on to run from my new portable HDD. I have a hewllett packard PC and i press F8 and go into the startup bios and there is no option to boot fromm portable HDD, only from CD or Floppy DD or inbuilt HDD or PCI. I select boot from my XP CD but when i try to install on my new portable HDD it says my computer cant see it to install. i can create a partition on it and format it but cant install XP onto it. Is this because the computer cant boot from portable HDD on startup that boot CD wont let me install onto it ? if so how can i get around this, i was thinking i either need to upgrade the startup bios or select boot from Floppy DD or CD with a program that allows startup access to Portable (USB) HDD. I have an old version of "Norton Ghost" on floppy and have tried to coppy HDD to HDD but it doesnt seem to see the portable HDD either only the inbuilt 1. I can install XP onto my USB HDD thru another computer I think but only options to boot from startup will still be CD, Floppy DD or inbuilt HDD. Thankyou for reading this and any efforts to help would be greatly appreciated. Merry christmas and HAPPY NEW YEAR ALL!:)

Well basically, when i go to shut down my computer it freezes when it gets to "Windows is shutting down", but it only freezes if my pc has been on for longer than around 30mins/hour. When i go to shut down my computer using start, i get an error message about dumprep and something like "failed to intailize", which happens to quick i can't read it. This error started to appear when it started freezing. I have tried disabling dumprep... i can't find it in both msconfig and regedit, but i disabled it through right click on my computer -> properties -> advanced -> Settings (startup and recovery -> and then under "Write debugging information i have selected none. I am running Windows XP Media Centre Edtion 2005 and today i upgraded to SP3 to see if that stopped the freezing, but didn't make no difference. So any help or tips to stop my computer from freezing would be greatly appriciated. Thanks, Joe :)