Unable to accesss BIOS to set boot order

I will try to give as much information as I have. A friend has an HP pavilion zt1135. It has XP (I consider it a virus) installed. He says it was fine when he shut it down but when it was powered up the next day it would only go to the page which allows selection of safe mode or other options. None of those options is dos. No matter what option is selected it comes back to that same screen,
I attempted to go to bios, to change boot order and go into diagnostics during boot up and it does not recognize (esc) (f2) or (f12) what I an trying to get, is for it to recognize a CD so I can use the restore set of disks. I do not know at the moment what the Bios is set to. Since I am unable to access it. Any help would be greatly appreciated.

 

To access the BIOS, as soon as the HP splash screen comes up hit esc. In the lower left corner it should tell you how to get into setup... I'm pretty sure it's the delete key to get in but things may have changed at HP since they took over Compaq.

 

Thanks for the recommendation but the problem is that (esc) (f2) or (f12) all actions which are supposed to get me into BIOS or diagnostics have no effect. No matter which option I choose it just proceeds through to the windows safe mode options screen.
I can not get it to go into bios setup. Any other suggestions?? Appreciate any thoughts at all.

 

Not so sure that those prompts will get you into your Bios but who am I to argue - if you are sure, then thats the final word. Try another keyboard.

 

Did you try Hp's website for this zt1135 laptop?

I found this on Hp's site after a very brief search. It deals with updating the BIOS and therefore tells you how to get into the BIOS.

ICE

 

Appreciate the advise but the status is as follows. Yes I visited the HP site. The one listed is only for updating if the computer is working. I have followed their instructions and that on the part of the computer that does work, the screen before going to the safe mode selection screen. The prompts are all listed but none have any effect. I am pretty sure that the keyboard is working because the only reaction I get from pressing it isa the tone for holding it too long and filling the buffer. The latest from HP is remove and reinstall the memory chip then hit the reset I did that no help. I think the exer.sys listed may be in order but will not yet give up. Any other thoughts?

 

Not sure what you are talking about - are you referring to the F1 key? The link merely lists how to get into the bios to check the version. But, once you are in the BIOS you are in and can do whatever. I have never seen a computer that had more than one way to enter the BIOS.

If you are getting this far then the BIOS seems okay. If your BIOS is corrupted the machine will not normally even POST.

Not sure what else to tell you - F1 is the only key I know of that gets you into the bios on HP laptops. Might be time to send that sucker in for service...

ICE

 

Personally i would surgest remocing the hard drive and formating it then reinstall into the laptop, this will get the fresh start that you are looking for.

 

AFAIK, F1 should get you into BIOS. I would reset CMOS before I reinstalled. I know a quirky elderly HP desktop very well that gets stuck this same way, or it refuses to boot at all and gives me a black screen with two characters I do not recognize in the upper left hand corner. After the third time in a year, I reset the boot order to floppy-cd-ide, but the last couple of times I doctored it, I just reset cmos instead of trying to boot from a media, and that does the trick. FWIW, anyway.

Johanna

 

Esc, F2 and F12 are a far cry different from F1. Thought you didn't know what you were talking about, but who am I to argue? Ice said it best:

 

In your first post, you said you considered XP to be a virus, and that you were looking for DOS. So I am assuming you are not familiar with XP? Have you worked with XP much? Can your friend get into Safe Mode? A System Restore might help. 3 people have suggested F1 and you haven't tried it, and there is no DOS in XP. Perhaps a service tech is not a bad idea.

Johanna

 

Sorry for all the confusion. Will try to clear it. The machine will only boot to the safe mode selection screen. In that process it passes through a screen, which can be read by hitting pause, that screen says (esc) will get you to the reset boot order function; (f2) to bios setup; and (f12) to diagnostics. None of those keys however had any effect. I used the reset button on the back at the direction of the tech support people but all that does is shut the machine down and when powered up again there is no change. The last advice was to remove the memory and reinstall. Then power up and use the reset. I did that to no effect. The final that tech support advised is that it is a bios hardware problem and needs to go back for hardware diagnostics. This morning the system owner advised me that he had tried once more to repeatedly hit the escape key during boot up and that this had resulted in a normal boot. I beleieve he has an itermittent hardware fault in the firmware module somewhere??? Maybe it is gremlins?

 

Tell him to try pressing F1 at the HP splashscreen, so that the safe mode-options screen gets bypassed.

Johanna