Windows Vista Vista won't load, get black screen after manufacturer splash screen

[FONT= "Arial"][/FONT]Hi! My Windows Vista Business suddenly stopped booting up on its own yesterday. I had to manually tell it to boot from the C drive. I scanned for viruses and other malware, and did not find anything serious. This morning I further discovered that the boot priority had changed. The computer had decided to try booting first from the DVD drive, next from the external hard drive, and THEN from the C drive. My husband re-ordered the priority to boot first from the C drive, and it appeared to accept the changes. However, upon re-starting the computer, it STILL tried to boot first from the DVD drive! I'm not sure how this happened or how to fix it. Help!

 

Possibly a dead CMOS battery?

A little more information in your "My System" may help

 

Here you go! I put in as much info as I could find. What is a CMOS battery?

 

Thanks, it helps.

A battery is required to remember Date/Time, Boot order and various other options stored in the BIOS. I would have thought an experienced user would know that.

Any way you're looking for a CR252 (or equivelent) button cell battery, replacing it should be easy enough and inexpensive but note down current BIOS settings to avoid any further problems.

 

Okay, the clock, calendar and boot priority are all reading correctly, so I doubt the CMOS battery is dead. The annoying thing is that I still have to go into F9 to TELL the computer to boot from the C drive. Otherwise, it appears to just sit there and not try to boot from anywhere. I don't hear the DVD or external drive grinding, and I don't see any lights flashing. I even unplugged the external drive to make sure it wasn't trying to boot from there. This is really a puzzlement. Even my IT guru dad doesn't know what to make of it. And this used to be HIS computer!!