Is my hard drive and/or bios going out?

[pstokely]

Sometimes when I boot up, is says the bios is not install, then I reboot and am able to get in XP. Then it might to do it again. Also, the hard drive light is blinking, but in a different pattern?

[Babel_17]

1. Bios "not installed" or not set up?

If your Bios is not set up and you reboot it usually means you will run with its default settings.

Cliffs Notes (if the above is the case): You likely just need a new CMOS battery. Fairly cheap and fairly easy to pop in. If you shut off your PC and you cut power to it no juice is going to the battery. If the battery is older it will lose all custom settings and will revert to its hardwired default settings. It will "complain" about this when you boot up.

[pstokely]

2. How long are batteries supposed to last?

Could it install it myself? The problem I'm having my other internal hard drive not showing up.

[Babel_17]

3. How long depends

I'll guess from two to eight years depending on battery type and how long and often you keep no juice going to the PC.

Yes, CMOS batteries can be user replaced, I've done it, check your manual, it should cover the process.

Regarding your HD: Check your Bios and make sure you have the right settings. If you have two SATA drives you might have to set some RAID settings. With my Dell I have one internal SATA drive and one external SATA drive and there are some important BIOS settings I had to make.

Lol, Dell dropped the ball on that one but that's another, and very long, story*.

I'm no guru so I can't walk you through anything, wish I could. :(

*http://www.dellcommunity.com/supportforums/board/message?board.id=Tech_Talk_XPS&thread.id=26761&view=by_date_ascending&page=1