twirling slash [and boot failure]

Hello,

A co-worker in my office has been having a problem with black screen on boot twice this week. The first time I wasn't given any specific info on it. When it happened this morning, however, she wrote down everything she saw on her screen, including:

"Error 0162: Configuration error - default configuration used "

and

"Press F1 to Setup, F2 to resume
*Error Boot Sequence will be taken if no selection is made
Hit F2 "

and

"Intel Base-Code, PXE-2.1 (build 083)

ENT MAC ADDR: 00 09 6B 83 6B C9
GUID: 91547046 28C6 3FF0 B42A 1B00492D61C8
-E53: No boot filename received
-M0F: Exiting Intel Boot Agent
2: No operating system found. Pres F1 to repeat boot sequence.

ENT MAC ADDR:
P... "
followed by a twirlish slash with no keyboard function.

There has been no software or hardware installed recently. Computer runs XP Pro SP2.

What could be causing this?

 

Update -

On reboot, the op went into F1, compared setup to another computer in the office that is not having a problem (computers were bought at the same time and set up is identical), hit F10 to save changes, and reboot was successful.

However, since this is the second time in a week that this has happened, I suspect the problem will return, so am still interested in any input as to what might be causing this to happen.

Thanks!

 

At a guess, hardware or firmware glitch of some sort. Not an area I know much about but moving the thread to the hardware section since some folks never look at XP and since I doubt this is OS related.

 

This would indicate that the motherboard battery (CMOS retention battery => the shiny coinlike thing on the motherboard) which retains the BIOS setup (the stuff you enter when you press F1 to enter setup) is weak or dying. The result is that the computer forgets this stuff and cannot figure out what hardware is connected to it or how to boot until you load that information.
You should unplug the computer and open it up. Look for a shiny coinlike thing with a number like 2032 or 2074 on it. Copy the number but do not remove the battery yet. Go to a store (most grocery and convenience stores carry them , home depot has them for under a dollar each which is cheapest) and buy a replacement. Return , and replace the battery. THen closeup , reconnect the PC an d enter F1 setup , enter the settings and detect the drives and save settings and exit. Done.

 

Finding the battery is the easy part - I think most people know that computer batteries look like a big watch battery. This particular one is located in quite an inconvenient and difficult to reach spot, but oh well! Once upon a time many moons ago, I had to replace a battery, but can't remember much of anything about the experience. But I'm very surprised that a computer that's only 2+ years old should even need to have the battery replaced! (It must have been made on a Monday ) And it seems to me I remember something about not actually touching the new battery - that one should wear a cotton glove or old sock or something of that nature while actually replacing the battery.

My question now would be regarding the F1 setup - should the computer know its own settings and pretty much "set itself up ", or will we have to go into setup and write down all the settings in advance?

 

The only time I have seen the "twirly slash" thing is on Adaptec SCSI RAID Controllers.

 

Done. As it turned out, the hardware that was in the way of the battery is on some kind of swivel, and just lifted up, and when I was done, I just laid it back down! It was great!

F1 settings were compared to another computer in the office, but other than having to set the time and date, everything seemed to be fine. I got no prompt to detect drives.