EMERGENCY!!! COMPUTER BRICKED!!! HELP ME ASAP!!

[The VCR King]

I am away this weekend and I got a call from my Dad saying my computer wouldn't boot. I asked him what happened and he said it froze so he rebooted it and it said BOOTMGR MISSING. I had him reboot it again and he told me it said CMOS SETTINGS INCORRECT. It appeared to be working perfectly fine previously, though. I think my PC finally died. I am devastated right now because the PC is currently bricked and I am a town away without access to it. Luckily I have a clone backup of the whole HDD on an external... Hopefully that didn't corrupt.

PLEASE HELP!

 

[Shlouski]

After getting the cmos settings incorrect message I would first try clearing the cmos and check all the settings are correct in the bios.

 

[The VCR King]

I'm on my way home now and I'm going to get a new cmos battery as well. I also know the mobo has a black button that says CL_CMOS. Should I press it?

 

[Shlouski]

Yes, while the battery is removed from the motherboard press that button. Remember this will delete everything, so when I boots again all setting will be lost and it will revert to default setting, so you will likely need to put some settings back in.

 

[beers]

Yes, while the battery is removed from the motherboard press that button

Isn't that a bit redundant?

 

[The VCR King]

New cmos battery installed and ran startup repair. The beast is running like a champ again!!

 

[Shlouski]

Isn't that a bit redundant?

I've had a couple of motherboards a long time ago that held there settings if you cleared the cmos with the battery in, for whatever reason. Its usually so easy to remove the battery if you need to open up the case to operate the button or jumper that I do it out of habit.

 

[The VCR King]

I got the PC booted but now my task bar is retarded.

My date and time went back to 2010 and I had to reset that. The task bar is still in the middle area and its all weird right now.

 

[Shlouski]

I got the PC booted but now my task bar is retarded.

My date and time went back to 2010 and I had to reset that. The task bar is still in the middle area and its all weird right now.

There are still some bugs lurking about in your system which is why I don't like repairs and is why is personally prefer to restore from entire or partial backups, I understand many people don't have this option. Most of the time if this happens I take the opportunity to start over with a new copy of windows, though this can be time consuming.

 

[The VCR King]

There are still some bugs lurking about in your system which is why I don't like repairs and is why is personally prefer to restore from entire or partial backups, I understand many people don't have this option. Most of the time if this happens I take the opportunity to start over with a new copy of windows, though this can be time consuming.

The rest of the taskbar is functional except for that right corner, but after all the other issues Ive had with the PC I don't mind it anyways. I'm working on a theme to make it look like Windows 98 so that might fix the taskbar issue anyways

 

[voyagerfan99]

I'm working on a theme to make it look like Windows 98

No. Just stop.

 

[The VCR King]

No. Just stop.

Anyways the only issue my PC has now is the taskbar but that doesn't really seem like a reason to go ahead and do a full reinstall. I can deal with having a stupid looking desktop for now.

 

[The VCR King]

I do, however, want to know why every time my PC crashes/blacks out BOOTMGR always goes missing. :/

 

[johnb35]

Either wrong boot order or failing hard drive.

 

[Darren]

Probably a conflict with how your SATA settings. You need to make sure you're attempting to boot from the drive in the same SATA mode as when you installed it. IDE, AHCI, or RAID. It probably defaults to IDE, and it's typically recommended to install your OS on an SSD in AHCI mode. Whether you actually did, I don't know, as IDE would still work.

In my opinion, you'd greatly benefit from a complete format, repartition, and reinstall of your OS.

 

[spirit]

+1 to what @Darren said and make sure that the only boot device in your boot list is the drive Windows is installed on. You can remove everything else from the boot list. Most BIOSes have a temporary boot menu you can use to temporarily boot off another device if you find yourself needing to boot from a CD/DVD or USB in the future.

Also make sure your BIOS is up-to-date.

 

[The VCR King]

Probably a conflict with how your SATA settings. You need to make sure you're attempting to boot from the drive in the same SATA mode as when you installed it. IDE, AHCI, or RAID. It probably defaults to IDE, and it's typically recommended to install your OS on an SSD in AHCI mode. Whether you actually did, I don't know, as IDE would still work.

In my opinion, you'd greatly benefit from a complete format, repartition, and reinstall of your OS.

The boot order has my primary HDD set as the boot, and the board doesn't have IDE...

 

[The VCR King]

Either wrong boot order or failing hard drive.

How would I diagnose a failing HDD? I run tests on it all the time and it always passes...

 

[spirit]

The boot order has my primary HDD set as the boot, and the board doesn't have IDE...

There is still likely an 'IDE mode' for your SATA controller.

How would I diagnose a failing HDD? I run tests on it all the time and it always passes...

If you can hear the drive clicking or access time becomes slow or there's lots of crashes then you have a problem. Check Event Logs in Windows too for any disk errors.

 

[The VCR King]

There is still likely an 'IDE mode' for your SATA controller.


If you can hear the drive clicking or access time becomes slow or there's lots of crashes then you have a problem. Check Event Logs in Windows too for any disk errors.

The computer isn't running that slow and the HDD is almost silent!