I have openSUSE 10.2 and Ubuntu Edgy 6.10 dual booted on a Compaq Presario machine that's about 2 1/2 years old. Everything was working fine up until tonight, when I switched out of openSUSE to go work on Ubuntu for a minute. The computer seemed to freeze on reboot, so after a few minutes of waiting, I hit the power button and restarted. Now neither system will boot. It's strange, because it seems like GRUB isn't even getting the chance to load. Usually the computer starts with a Compaq splash screen before loading my chipset (Ubuntu is on an external sata with VIA chipset), and now I don't even get the Compaq screen. The monitor never turns off standby mode, so for some reason it seems as if the computer isn't sending the signal. Is this a BIOS/CMOS problem, or is there a possibly easier solution for this?

Thanks in advance.
J.

Could be many things, power supply, mother board etc. Can you tell if any fans or the hard drive appear to be working? Do you hear any beeps?

When I checked it this morning the fans appeared to be running, and the status light for the hard drive was on. I started testing out some different things, and when I turned off the external hard drive prior to boot, it booted up. When it got to GRUB, it spit out Error 21, which was expected, so I powered off, switched on the external hard drive again, powered back up, and voila! It worked. I have no idea why, or how, but I'm just glad it works.