[Axegrinder]

Not sure if this should be in hardware or software...

Got this annoying glitch with my dads computer, in that it will ask you to select a boot device after going through the post/bios screens etc, surely the bios should remember the boot order and go through the boot sequence automattically?

Specs are (if needed)

AMD Athlon 800mhz
384mb of RAM
Western digital 20GB
CDRW and DVD ROM drives
ASUS A7V-E motherboard
Nvdia Geforce2 MX graphics
Windows XP

[spot]

The BIOS does remember it. The AwardBIOS Boot Menu sets the priority order for the devices to be searched for a bootable system.

What's the wording of the message once the post/bios screens are complete? Maybe it simply can't find anything bootable.

What's the order of the selected devices on the boot menu?

[Axegrinder]

The message says "Select boot device, use up or down arrows and press enter to select" or somthing like that.

I set the boot order in the bios to CDROM first the hard disk.

[Cew27]

if you set cd rom first maybe it is trying to boot from cd, set it to hdd first and you shouldn't get this and when you do want to boot from cd press f12 and select boot device on startup

[Axegrinder]

Thing is i set the bios to boot from hard disk first yet teh messsage still came up =/.

[spot]

and the computer will actually go ahead and boot immediately into the hard drive if you select that?

[Axegrinder]

It didnt though, it still asked for me to select a boot device.

[spot]

There you are then, that's your reason. The disk is currently not bootable.

[Axegrinder]

Yeah but when i press enter it will boot from it =/. I don't see why it should boot from the hard disk automatically.

[spot]

I apologise, I keep misunderstanding what you write.

The only thing I can think of is that you have a bootable CD in as well, and the question is "do you want to boot the CD?" and if you say no it boots the hard disk. That's the only condition I've ever seen where the boot asks, and the question's actually on the CD not in the BIOS. If it isn't that then I've never seen it and I'm sure it shouldn't happen. As you say, the Boot Menu is there to set the device order, it's nonsense to repeat the question during the boot process if the selected media is available to bring up.

[Cew27]

try resetting the bios to default