So many problems! Error messages. Please read and help if you can

Great news. Glad to hear it.

Squibbler said:

F14TOMCAT!!!! Thank you soooo much!!!!! you are an absolute star!!!! I went and checked my settings again in the bios because of what you suggested about resetting defaults .. tried that, no luck but then I dug a little deeper this time, checking every setting ..there is another setting that sets CPU to toggle between SATA and RAID - a different page to the one where you select the option 1, option 2, option 3 ... AND ...I am IN!!!!!! I am backing up everything tonight even if I have to stay up ALL NIGHT!!!! I never visited this page before - so strange it happened!

Squibbler said:

Somehow plugging in the flash drive must have reset that setting in the BIOS .. you have just saved me a LOT of money and time, I cannot thank you enough

I am so happy to hear you tamed the beast! YES! Back that monster up! Twice!! :)

Cheers! TC

abenavraham said:

Hi Squibbler. I'm glad you were able to get your RAID settings back! Just curious how/what you are backing up (i.e. using Marcium Reflect to back up to an external HDD?). Am also curious as to how many drives you have in the PC (if you mentioned this in a previous post i missed it). Typically you need a min. of 2 to do RAID. If you are doing RAID on a single drive, even if this has been working, it isn't a good idea. For Raid on a single drive you typically need 2 partitions, so you are basically giving up 1/2 your drive and taking a performance hit as well. Aaron

Squibbler said:

Hi abenavraham. I have two x 750GB drives... set up as RAID 0 by DELL...i have no idea why they did it like this. I had a java virus 4 years ago and had to wipe everything, redo the drives and start again. I was aware a little of the risk with RAID 0 after reading about it at the time but figured there was a reason for DELL doing it this way and as was anxious to get everything running again stuck to it.. mistake! (I think I had a system image from when it was virus clean and so worried it wouldnt work on a different hard disk setup).
RE backups - I have an old fashioned method - plug in external drives and copy across! I dont have a vast amount of new data each week and so got lazy. I need to be more diligent. I have been good with photos.. they have a backup drive to themselves, but not been good with backing up my PST file or recent genealogy documents. I don't want to pay high storage fees in the cloud or need expensive software for my small amounts, but I need to make sure I do it regularly.

@Squibbler That will get your data backed up for now, but, your photos and docs and such are not the only thing that seriously need backing up. The system, the OS itself and all supporting files need a good backup. There is no more highly recommended FREE software than Macrium Reflect. Most highly recommended on this forum and elsewhere. @abenavraham is hinting at it...take his advice and download it and use it. Help with it (it's easy) is everywhere on this forum. Here's the link. ........... TC

Macrium Reflect Free | Macrium Software

f14tomcat said:

Looks like maybe his BIOS settings, somehow, got messed up. Try to reset the BIOS to factory default, from within the BIOS. There's an option for it, all have it.

TC, thanks so much for your help! I can't rep you (gotta spread the love around), but you sure deserve it! Thanks!

@Squibbler
TC is right - a complete backup should be made including the OS, so you image all the partitions to the external drive.
Once that is done, we could try the in-place repair to get things running smooth again.