so even pressing f8 it does not give you boot options and straight away takes you to the login screen???

Raj

Are you entering the bios to change boot sequence or pressing a key at post to change boot device to cd. I would suggest you change it in the bios. I see you indicated that it stays in setup but usually there is a "save changes and exit" option, or something very similar, to exit the bios. I have fixed this problem more than a few times with a repair install. If all else fails, I would suggest you use an external enclosure to get your important data from the hard drive. Hope this helps you....

After making the change to boot from the CD in the bios it says press F1 to save the changes and exit, but pressing F1 does absolutely nothing. Thank you

I would reset the bios with reset jumper position or by unpluging and taking the cmos battery out and then put it back in. This will probably reset the boot configuration to where the cdrom is before the hard drive.

No. When F8 is used it goes to the screen that asks for which boot to use and when safe mode is initiated , it goes back to the original to logon screen and then it goes into reboot.

Mike did it not show any change when you took out the cmos battery to reset the bios?? If you haven't tried it then i'd say give it a go and hopefully we ll see a ray of light.

Raj

Hi, If the bios refresh did not work, then it sounds like a startup file was removed or damaged,

Have you tried system restore, I understand that you can't get into safe mode, at the boot up process go to dos promt and use this method, this will get you back to a point before your system crashed.

At the dos promt type: %systemroot%\system32\restore\rstrui.exe this will open system restore and you will be able to backtrack a clean startup