black screen w/bliking cursor at satrt up

[Guest]

first off i'd like to thank anyone who is willing to help me. well the
situation is a bit like this: i have a system set up to dual boot windows xp
sp1 (lets call it drive c), and windows xp sp2 (drive d). the computer is old
so for the sake of performance sometimes is needed to run in sp1. well it was
turned on yesterday morning and after bios loaded i got an SPD error. then it
went on and instead of windows loading up i got a black screen with a
blinking cursor. to test if the HD was bad i changed my boot up order and the
other windows booted up with no problems. i could access the drive where the
unresponsive window was and it seemed to be working fine.

then i ran chkdsk on drive d and everything seemed to be working fine.
i also did an in-place upgrade to the installation in drive D and i keep
getting a black screen at boot up. i have done an additional in place-upgrade
and nothing. i do'n' want to reformat the drive to install windows....so what
should i do?

 

[peter]

As I understand it SPD is a function on the Bios Chip.........which can lose
its memory if the CMOS Battery is getting weak/dead.
Look on your mobo for the CMOS battery..gently remove it and replace it with
the same make/model#............if the problem persists after that get back
to us
peter

 

[Guest]

well im not to sure the spd is the problem otherwise i would not have been
able to boot my alternate windows xp. but its worth a try. any other
suggestions while i get a replacement battery?