I got it fixed about 20 minutes after I posted. Thanks.

Using living CD wouldn't have worked. It wasn't that I couldn't boot -
it was I wasn't even getting TO boot. When the machine turned on the
BIOS was turning off video output - or something to that effect - so
when the machine started up you were never getting any further.

What I did was flush CMOS and that fixed it.

home.roadrunner.com/~woodsmall/technical.htm#BOOT">BOOT
CDs, SLIPSTREAMED CDs, Bootable USB & FLOPPIES

He already fixed the problem I thought.

Also, the problem he was reporting was specifically a BIOS issue, so
changing what OS he was using (whether it be Linux on a Hard Drive or on
a CD) wouldn't really do much.

I was made aware by him thanks.

You clearly do not know what a boot able CD or pen is for. Its a first
aid kit to repair systems not to replace them. You use the boot up in
the memory and can then run any repair program you want and look at the
hard drives of the native programs already installed.

I understand what the pen drive is for but I don't see how it would work
or could work in this situation.

It wasn't anything to do with the OS that was a problem. It was with the
BIOS - which initializes system hardware pieces. The change to the
graphics setting in the BIOS means that neither the on board nor added
on video card was was being initialized. There was no video out put so,
using a pen drive wouldn't have helped.

I'm glad the problem is solved but I'm perplexed how any BIOS setting could
disable all video. In my experience teaching computer hardware and trouble
shooting systems the odd time I have had to replace the video card
temporarily with a very basic one (sometimes just PCI) to be able to enter
the BIOS settings. That's a very rare situation though; more common is the
balky video card that causes a reset before the sytem is fully started, in
which case a bootable O/S, VGA only or safe mode start usually allows the
operating system to be adjusted.

I have recreated the problem several times now on this system.

Change the VGA shared memory from which setting its at to zero and after
boot there is zero video signal.

That's very interesting. I thought video cards with onboard memory (and that
includes all that I'm aware of) did not need shared memory to start.

There is usually a way to set which video is initialized first and I suppose
if the onboard video (which definitely does need to use shared memory from
the mother board) was first and there was no memory made available it could
hang the system. Do you think that is what happened?

I dont know the answer to that. I installed a new video card with 512mb
on board so my son could play WOW. From what you just said, I guess that
could be what happened. As I said, its easy to repeat again and again -
at least on that Shuttle system.

Either way, now I know not to mess with that setting again :D

Is there a option for initialize first device?
On most of the boards I have see you can initialize pci or agp first.
Then at that point you can turn off the onboard video and zero out the card.

That was my take on it exactly and the boot able system would have got
programs to fix the BIOS, but if its fixed OK.

I have a Dell Dimension 2400 running XP. I get "BIOS not installed" message that
comes at startup on a DOS type screen. It does not seem to affect the way the
computer runs. The reason I sent this is because I got another computer HD
loaded with Linux and Libre Office at a local Linux users group that is located
about 50 miles away. The fellow who loaded it wanted to make one a master and
the other a slave but said he could not because of the BIOS issue. He wanted to
fix that first.so right now I just have 2 separate HDs with XP and Linux. Is
there a way to fix the BIOS?

Apparently this can be caused by the BIOS being set to look for a RAID
array when a RAID controller isn't present. Look in BIOS for RAID and
disable - should fix it