[Ex-Dem]

Did you try to reinstall LILO or GRUB or whatever you use as a bootloader? (btw, I've found that LinuxQuestions.com is pretty useful in cases like this...)

[birbear]

Buy a Mac.

[this_ol_patriot]

A stab is the dark..geometry mismatch? Upgrading BIOS can change hard disk geometry, did you check the BIOS settings?

http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&lr=&q=linux++geometry+mismatch+hard+disk

[JenB]

Any chance it's your hard drive that's fried? Mine died recently and the symptoms were kind of similar, though not quite the same.

[SeaBiscuit]

Most bios flashes will reset the bios to it's default settings once flashed, and so right after the pc reboots the first time you need to hit the delete key (most common, some pc's hit F1) to get into the bios and make adjustments so it reflects your former setup. Turn off the pc and turn it back on, hit the delete key as soon as you see something appear on the screen and this should get you into the bios.

That's where I would start first, its probable that default settings has changed some hardware setting so linux can not boot.

[Bloody Sam Roberts]

How did you upgrade your BIOS? Did you flash it or did you replace the chip with a new one?

If you flashed it, it is more than likely the flash did not work and corrupted the BIOS. If this is the case, I would petition the company that you bought the flash software from and demand a new chip....as well as a chip with your old BIOS version on it.

The same thing happened to me and when I expressed my displeasure with the integrity of their flash software, they sent me 2 new chips, one with the old and one with the new BIOS.

[ThreePuttinDude]

[ShadowAce]

Linux assistance requested over here.

[Recall]

I'm thinking as hard as I can and all I come up with is turn the computer off and shake it real hard.

I wish I could help. The spirit is willing but the brain is weak.

Fingers crossed.

[amigatec]

Their was an issue with Mandrake 9.2 and LG CDROMS. It seems that LG used some reserved commands normally used for CDRW drives and when a user installed Mandrake 9.2 it would erase the BIOS in the CDROM. It believe it was the 'flush' command to flush the cache in the drive instead, it flushed the BIOS.

Only certain drives were affected, I happen to have one and flashed the drive BIOS before installing Mandrake.

It is possible that Compaq or the CDROM manufacturer has done something like this or maybe Mandrake has found another improper use of a command.

You might contact Mandrake and see if this is a known problem, since 10.1 has just been released.

(I am downloading 10.1 as I type this.)