when i turn my computer on, a black screen that says press f1 to boot f2 for menu, what do i do?

Question

i turn on my computer and this black screen comes up and says primary and secondary hardrives arent found, i press f1 to try to reboot, but it keeps saying press f1 everytime i press f1, what do i do?

Answer 1

You may have accidentally deleted or had a trojan/virus get into your computer. You may have to reinstall windows and format your hard drive. Do you still have your windows disc? or the discs that come with your computer to restore it? If you have no idea how to fix this, you could get a hold of Best Buy's Geeksquad, but they have to ship your computer out of town usually to get it fixed.

Either way, I'm sure you have a computer savvy friend somewhere around.

Answer 2

hi it could be as your previous answers have said to be a trojan etc. but it sounds pretty self explanatory as in its not reading your harddrive , so the answer of reformtaing and reinstalling windows will not work if it was reading hard drive saying no OS found then yes but this sounds like your hard drive has crashed , to help ease your mind i just had one brought to me a month ago same thing and it was indeed the hard drive , usually 9 out of 10 times with that black screen and messages the hard drive is gone. hope you had ur important files etc.. saved to disc somewhere. YOu can obviously check it to be on safe side by trying boot it from a boot disc. and a reformat But if it was brought to me for trouble shooting and repair I would probably go staright to the hard drive. You can get a new hard drive fairly reasonable depending the size etc.. the last one i installed was a western digital 40 gig and it normally runs around 60 bucks fpr the h drive and if you have your o.s disc and all the drivers etc.. its very simple .. I can walk u thru it . Good luck, dont let a Tech over charge you but now days almost every family has a computer wiz in it or knows a good friend etc.. if not Good luck if U need more help email me. . Good luck and hope i answered your ?

Answer 3

When it's prompting you to boot, it's looking for a source to boot from. Assuming you have a standard setup in your BIOS, it will look to your CD/DVD Rom and your hard drive.

Since it sounds like you don't have an operating system disk in your CD/DVD it will look towards your hard drive. But if hitting F1 continues a cycle of prompting, your hard drive is most likely defective.

If it was working previously, there are a few things you'll want to take note of. First, is the hard drive old? I've seen some last for over 15 years and some die within 1. Two, have you made recent changes to your operating system or downloaded questionable files? These things can corrupt your operating system or the file structure of the hard drive.

My recommendation would be to bring it to a professional. Best Buy's Geek Squad would not really qualify in my opinion. I would look up in the yellow pages and find a small business who specializes in home PC repair. Those types of companies typically look for more than a high school education.

Answer 4

f1 will boot to your bios selection which is usually the c hard drive (operating system) f2 will take you to the menu for your bios or stored memory for startup, dont mess with the bios unless you have some knowledge
next: apparently your hard drive is not being reconized maybe it is shot hard to tell without being their at the computer.
has anyone tinkered with this recently, the hardware or the bios setup
if you got your windows disc you might want to reinstall or repair your system IF it will read your cd drive
you can change you bios setup to read certain boot oders, it is probably set to boot the hard drives first, change it to read the cd drive first instead, then if things workout change it back later
but like i said if you do not understand get some help, if the bios gets changed and messed up then there will be big problems

Answer 5

You got some serious issue with your motherboard. That all I can tell you that.

Whether or not you making it up, if you can't load BIOS then there is no possible way to find out whether their problems with the harddrive. You might not able to tell whether putting a new harddrive will work.

What about pressing Del or F2?

Hobbes, booting doesn't have anything to do with virus and trojans. Geek Squad is not Super Man compares to their price and it would be wasteful to find that it didn't solves his problem.

Answer 6

It sounds like you're experiencing some sort of hardware malfunction with your hard drives. Either that or a virus of some sort is messing with the computer. Either way, I would recommend getting a computer expert to check it out, unless you really know what you're doing.

Answer 7

call your computer provider and ask him what is wrong. If he does not say anything then buy a new one