End of the line (RIP Media PC)

DESPITE a dream telling me how to fix that bloody PC, when I tried it this morning it didn't work. Sigh. It freezes on this screen. without allowing me to select SETUP or BOOT MENU:

What's worse is that if I don't press ESC I get this - which must have been burnt to the BIOS by Kevin sometime (it's a picture of Michelle and her sister) before installing the board.

Fortunately I can salvage the drives from it.

Crazy Talk (but maybe)

Um, as opne last experiment I plugged in the "BAD" (gives S.M.A.R.T. errors on every boot) IDE hard drive as my primary  and....

...it tried to boot!

OK, it gave errors, but I could now access SETUP and  BOOT MENU. Turns out that the old drive has a version of GRUB on it and an old Ubuntu install. Grub runs but Ubuntu is stuffed. But that's not the point. The Media PC isn't dead after all.  When I plugged the other IDE drive back in and tried to boot, it froze, just like before, so that drive is the cause of the problem. If I can find another (GOOD) IDE drive (probably at least 40 Gb) the Media PC will be resurrected.

There's always...

...the Computer Markets at the Newcastle basketball Stadium on Sunday. I can get there and back with time to spare, and there's bound to be some Macedonian guys there selling IDE drive from a cardboard box (the Vienamese dealers operate at a stall).