Pre Bios Behavior

The short story. I added a sata pci card. Upon reboot there was no monitor activity. "No Signal". I removed the graphic card, reset it, and the signal returned.
However upon boot on the top left side of the screen it is reading 'mb'
2339 2340 2341 mb - and so forth. I don't know what is happening. I cannot get into cmos, boot normal, and so forth. At the bottom of the screen is 'HP Workstation' below that F9boot F10setup F12Network. The F keys do not respond as the boot sequence/startup keeps reading mb 's.

I removed the memory, rebooted, got the beeps. I reinserted the memory, and viola the start screen runs the mb count. I swapped out graphic card - and tried another and same story. The computer used to simply boot into Windows 7, and now this mess simply by an act of adding another card to the machine.

This is a work station computer and the user expects the computer to work ! and I am completely stuck. What can I do? In panic mode. Thanks

The scan on *.* mb ended with a large blue box; inside the blue box it shows 'power on password' and next to it a Key logo? I hit enter and another key appears. What's do to?

The SATA PCI card may have its own onboard BIOS that is used to set it up. It may be interfering with your PC's BIOS. I've used a Silicon Image PCI IDE RAID card in the past and it had its own dedicated key you pressed to enter its BIOS to set it up, and detect the drives connected to it. On boot up the video card BIOS screen would display, then the RAID cards BIOS would show a Press the F2 key to enter setup, then the motherboard BIOS would take over. Take the SATA card back out and see what happens. If its a resource conflict, putting it in a different slot may fix it.

Ok Here's what I did I took out the 16GB memory put in a 512mb chip and the scan 'mb' went quickly ; and I got code errors saying that the date was wrong. I finally got into Cmos ; the date was 2005. I made the date current, and the computer booted normal. Thanks for indulging this panic attack.

I'm sorry - missed the Sata card comment and that was absolutely correct. That started the escalation into confusion. Once I removed the card ; fiddled with memory, reset the date ; the computer is normal.

I will do the sata card on a weekend when I can fully concentrate on issues - I did this just before the workers are to arrive thinking I would have no complications. Now I know what to expect when adding on a sata card. Thanks....

If the motherboard BIOS detects the SATA card correctly, it should show up as an option in the BIOS boot order/boot device menu. That's the way my old RAID card worked. If you are just adding it to add extra drives for storage you don't want it as the first boot device. The SATA card may have RAID and JBOD options. JBOD is Just a Bunch Of Disks. A funny way of saying NOT RAID.