Vista BIOS Error - No Boot Screen

Yesterday my HP Slimline s3020n just crashed, leaving me nothing but a BIOS error screen. I'd love to post a picture of it, but Google Images can't seem to find one. Basically, its just a Blue Screen of Death that says, "BIOS ERROR!!! Restart your computer and check your drives!", in layman's terms.

Now I can't get it to boot. I turn it on, the tower starts up and the fan starts whirring away, but nothing happens on the screen. The keyboard flashes its NumLock LEDs once, but then cuts off. The screen doesn't come on (but I know the screen works because if you press one of the monitor buttons, the screen will turn on and then go back to sleep). So the fan whirs away but nothing happens.

I've unplugged and checked the pins on every cable.
I've gone in and checked the hardware (the only aftermarket thing I've done to it was put 2G of RAM in).
I've checked the power source.
I'd love to reinstall Vista, or boot a BIOS from a disc, but I can't do it without a keyboard.

Now, before I send this little nightmare off to GeekSquad, is there anything you guys can suggest for me to do to try and fix this? Do remember that I can't get to any boot screens.

 

Did it say:
0x000000A5: ACPI_BIOS_ERROR

Odds are, your motherboard is toast. You could unplug everything and remove your cmos battery, say a Novena, and then replace the battery and plug in and try a start again, but I doubt it will do anything.

 

I'm not sure exactly what it said, because it just flashed the screen for a few moments and then shut off. The only thing I caught was BIOS error, and to check the drives, like I said above.

What exactly would cause a motherboard to fry? I don't leave it on overnight, so I can't imagine a brownout would fry it when its in Sleep, which is only a few hours at a time.

 

when the bios error occurs you can press Pause Key to Pause the screen untill you press any key .. this way you can note down the error

 

...That would have helped yesterday, but thanks anyway.

So I took out the CMOS battery for ten minutes, dusted everything off, and tested the CMOS battery for voltage. Its still got 3 volts, but after I put it back in, the computer's still rejecting any attempts to boot.

 

Bump.
10char

 

In my mind, two things could have happened (both bad).
1. BIOS somehow got corrupted (did you flash it by chance?)
2. Dead MB
Unless your MB allows for removing/replacement of the BIOS chip you're going to have to get your MB replaced, if it's not on warranty, check ebay for another (same model as yours) laptop that has a working MB but is scrapped for some other reason which you could swap out.

 

I'm with him ^

 

I with him too also to OP change the post title to "System Bios Error" :wink:

 

Just to add my voice to the chorus of the doomsayers - your motherboard is almost certainly dead. I had a somewhat similar experience with an old _Dell desktop that I monkeyed around with as my first experiment in actually getting under the hood of a computer (thank God I didn't try that with a computer I actually needed ). To cut a long story short, I got impatient with a cranky RAM slot, forced a stick of RAM in too forcefully, and cracked something on the motherboard. The next time I turned it on, it started, finished booting the OS, gave me a quick warning that it was shutting down because of temp problems, and that was that. When I tried to reboot, I got a quickie blue screen, and then nothing but the fan and a little glow from the otherwise black screen that let you know the screen was turned on. Opened the thing up, and lo and behold, one of the chips had burned the white printing off of itself. Oops.

In your case, I don't know what the cause might have been, but the end result sounds pretty much the same.