HELP - PC just died

[charlesr]

Got a windows message about reverting to a previous registry setting.
Thought this was scary, so tried to reboot. It made it to the windows logo and then paused forever.
I rebooted again and now it does the memory checks slowly and then fails at "detecting IDE drives..."

I don't have any IDE drives and it has already noticed this further up.
I can 't get as far as bios to turn off the IDE part of the motherboard.

Any ideas, apart from wiggle the RAM?

[charlesr]

Hmmm. Well, reseating all the RAM and the videocard seems to have done the trick.

Except CHKDSK is reporting hundreds of errors in the index (and is fixing them).
And some orphaned files.
This is on a newish drive.

Gah. How worried should I be. I'll back up if possible....

[EvilBoris]

Reset the CMOS perhaps

[charlesr]

How do i do that dude? (google time).

[briareos_kerensky]

Unplug the HDDs and try to access the BIOS. HDDs might be SATA but the BIOS could have been set in legacy mode and the motherboard is managing them as standard IDE drives.
Faulty RAM usually gives other problems, if you're lucky it's only the HDD.

[edit] to reset the CMOS you either press a CMOS reset button (usually on high end mobos) or unplug the button battery for a minute or so.

[abigsmurf]

It's not always a button, sometimes you have to set a jumper.

Golden Rule of HDD failure: either it'll fail in the first 1 or 2 months or it'll last well over 5 years.