Hello,
I’m hoping someone here will be able to help me… but, I strongly suspect I’m going to need to pay a computer technician to fix this one.
Yesterday, I got the My Book Essential 3TB and hooked it up to my Windows Media Center computer. I had this computer for at least 3-4 years and never had any problems like this previously. When I first tried to restart the computer, the monitor just showed a a flashing bar at the top left-hand corner of the screen. However, when I unhooked the My Book Essential I was still able to boot the computer successfully. I did notice that this issue, or issues quite similar, do seem to be documented here on this website.
However, the second, or perhaps the third, time I tried to reboot the computer disconnecting the My Book Essential didn’t help. I still couldn’t boot the computer.
So, I figured it was a CMOS/BIOS problem and I needed to reset the BIOS. I tried both the jumper pins method and also just taking the CMOS battery out for a half hour. No effect. The computer still doesn’t boot up.
Doesn’t boot up… more specifically, the lights go on for all the various drives,… the lights flash on the CD/DVD drives sequentially,… and then the light goes on for the hard drive, and it reads the hard drive for a little while, and then just stops. The monitor is blank, the lights on the keyboard do not illuminate, nor do the light on the bottom of the mouse. No error code beeps… nothing.
I have a Windows XP Pro disk… I tried putting that in both the CD/DVD drives. I figured I’d try the recovery console… It seems to just skip over the CD/DVD drives and floppy disk. I even tried an old Windows ME boot disk for the external floppy drive. It ignores all of them, then finally reads the hard drive for a few moments, and then that’s it. Since I opened the case to reset the CMOS jumper and remove the CMOS battery, I know the fans and hard drive are definitely running.
I called up WD customer service. I told the rep everything I’ve explained here. I did agree that it’s possible that the computer is trying to boot from the WD drive… then, he said you have to update your BIOS…
Okay… this is where I got lost… with the computer in its present state, how do I do that? If I recall correctly, when one updates the BIOS one usually copies the new BIOS to a floppy, or burns a CD ROM, and then the computer reads the new BIOS from the CD or floppy disk…
But, if the computer won’t boot from the Windows XP Pro disk… into the recovery console… or even from a Windows ME boot floppy, then how do I get it to read a CD or floppy with a new BIOS on it. I mean… every time I’ve updated a BIOS before, I had an operating system… or at least I’d think you’d have to get into the boot menu.
I get no error code beeps… so it’s not even getting that far in the boot process. And, also, unless I made an error, I reset the BIOS with both the jumper pins and by taking the CMOS battery out…
In any case, the customer service rep say I wasn’t listening… He just kept saying “You’ve got to update the BIOS… it’s a simple procedure.” And, I kept saying “Yes, perhaps so, but how do I do that with the computer in its present state?”
So, that’s my question for WD customer service… Tell me the procedure for updating the BIOS with the computer in its present state.
If there is a way to do this… please tell me. Thank you.
Take care,
Paul
