HELP! my BP6 has lost it's mind!

[jaybird]

It all started yeasterday when I first booted up. My PC could not "see" the "C" drive, listed it as a "PO1" instead of a UDMA4. I reset it in the "Soft-BIOS" and went on my way. Now today it won't retain any settings in the soft BIOS even after reset, save and soft-boot.

Could this be the result of a dead CMOS battery?

I go through memory chk, identifies cd-rom drives, goes to hppt366 blue bios screen, does not identify "C" correctly(20 gig wd ata66 on IDE 3), however, it identifies second drive on IDE4(60 gig wd ata100), also does not "see" CPU correctly and resets to default of 300 mhz at fsb 0f 66 mhz.

When I try to save changes before exiting it goes to defaults on reboot.

Please advise ASAP! either here or at my e-mail address or both:

jayfontaine1@juno.com

[jaybird]

Well, I tried the battery, it checked out ok. Then, things really got wierd! All of my registry settings became "invalid"(size of files reported as wrong). When I tried to correct using scandisk it duplicated all registry settings and filled up my "C" drive! My guess is a virus of some sort although this PC is not connected directly to the Internet so I'm thinking because it is dual-boot(98SE/NT4.0) somwhow, some way a bunch of files became "cross-linked" and screwed everything up. FDISK time and reformat seems to have cleared everything up(at least for now).

Funny, I never had any of these problems for 3 years now until I installed my PIII 1.1 GHZ and NEO S370(had dual celeries, 366 @ 572 for 3 years, no problems), I hope to go dual as soon as all problems are resolved and, no, I have not done any mobo mods yet.

Regards,

jaybird

[Snugglebear]

Doubtful this was a virus. Just reset the CMOS (use the jumper or pull the battery for a minute or two while the computer is unplugged from the wall) and then enter all the settings again. Machines just do this sometimes... don't ask me why.