Re: Todays Nasty little problem: Defeat the BIOS
On Fri, 30 Sep 2011 08:00:05 -0500, Harry Putnam wrote:
> Equipment: Older P4 3.00Ghz running wheezy.
>
> I've got a nasty little problem here this morning... My debian box will
> not show anything on the monitor. I fear the graphics card has gone
> south... I have one side off the box so removed the card and reinserted
> hoping it might fix things.. of course it did not.
If you really think the VGA card has died grab another one and test with
it.
Is your monitor getting video signal (green light instead ambar) when you
power up the computer? Can you hear any beeps from the motherboard? Can
you heard the hard disk running and so loading the system?
If your motherboard can live without VGA it will boot despite having the
VGA card attached or not and BIOS will continue with the OS load. Your
board's manual will tell.
> Now the bios is being invoked on bootup (I think).
>
> I suspected it may be a dialog I've seen where user is prompted to
> either hit del for the bios or any key to continue... I cannot see any
> of this but am just guessing.
>
> I tried just hitting a key but the OS or at least the networking part
> never became accessable... So I'm pretty sure its hung at the bios.
If your BIOS is stuck with a message and waiting for some kind of user
interaction to proceed you will have to get a new VGA card if the current
one is really failing.
> Is there any way to bypass the bios or get beyond that somehow.. Just
> anything to get the OS running so I can ssh in and salvage my data?
At the moment there is not need to start worring about the data. You can
always remove the hard disk and attach it into another computer as a
secondary device and get the files from there. The important part is to
know what hapenned, what component is failing and replace it.
Greetings,
--
Camaleón
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