Infinite Reboot Loop! Please HELP!!

[EvanKlug]

Hi guys. This is my first time here, so if I post in the wrong place or do something wrong, please just help me out

I have a problem with my secondary computer. Whenever I turn it on it boots, shows the BIOS, then goes black for about a second, then shows the bios again. Infinite reboot loop.

I had Windows 7 on here, and I read about the fix online. But there was another problem I ran into. I can't boot from a CD for whatever reason.
There's no "Press any key to boot from CD..." or anything at all.
My CD drive is totally fine. I have a load of them in my garage, and I've replaced it twice just to make sure.
In case this matters, I have 2 BIOSes. The first BIOS is for my GPU, which is a nVidia GeForce 6600. It's an old card, but it works, so no matter. I don't think that BIOS does anything really. Then after that there's a COMPAQ bios. I checked through the settings, and I couldn't see any reason it shouldn't be seeing the CD.

I've tried lots of different CDs, my Windows 7 install, my Windows XP install, Ubuntu, Puppy Linux, Chrome OS, nope. My CDs turned out to be ok.

Also, I am totally fine with wiping this drive. I just want to put Windows XP on it and make it function like a regular computer.

Any help will be extremely appreciated. Thanks so much.
~Evan

 

[MilesAhead]

Will the machine boot up with "factory default" BIOS settings? I've never owned a Dell but sometimes there's a jumper or setting to reset to factory default. Or pull the real time clock battery and wait for 1/2 hour before inserting the battery. Then power it up.

If the CMOS battery is old it could be the BIOS settings are corrupted. Maybe it's failing a CRC test.

 

[EvanKlug]

After I read your post, I went to my BIOS settings and looked for Factory Reset.
I couldn't find it, so I exited the settings and...
As if magic it booted to Windows 7 for some reason.

I didn't even do anything! Literally nothing happened to make this work!

However, I want to get rid of Windows 7 and replace it with Windows XP.
My CD drive still won't work. My XP CD and any other cd will not show up. "Please insert a disc into drive X:".

Ah. I just got a blue screen. I can't really get back to Windows without sheer luck, so please respond quickly as to how I can get this glitchy copy of Windows 7 off here and get my CD drive functioning.

One more thing. I just swapped out the drives and I still can't detect anything, so I know it's not a problem with the device itself. But as I was swapping I noticed a tiny black cord was unplugged. Heh, oops. Well, too bad that didn't really do anything. I was hoping it was a dumb problem like that.

Thanks so much

 

[MilesAhead]

The classic way to reset BIOS default is to pull the CMOS battery, as I mentioned. For Dell specific stuff I would try their online support/help. I think on Compaq there was a dedicated jumper you pulled so that you didn't have to pull the CMOS battery. Did the same thing. Routed the power away from the memory. Dell may have something similar.

I would try to get the booting stable first. If your CMOS settings are corrupted, settings for HDs could be any random garbage. You could conceivably damage your drives by running them with funky settings.

 

[EvanKlug]

I'm pretty sure the CMOS battery is that little silver circular battery in the motherboard?
Okay, I'll take it out and put it back in to see what happens.

...

It booted to the BIOS. It's running on a counter of MB.
It's on 920MB right now, going up about 2MB/second.
Is it counting my hard drive space? My RAM?
Okay, it's done. Wait, two beeps? What does that mean?

It keeps rebooting itself to the BIOS over and over. I hear two beeps then it reboots.

Suddenly it goes to Windows. Let me see if my CD drive works now.

YES!!!
HOLY CRAP IT WORKS ON WINDOWS!!!

Thanks so much. You're awesome.

 

[MilesAhead]

Thanks so much. You're awesome.

I know. I just have trouble convincing other people of the fact. :devil: