Ghost in the Machine?
 

This is weird.

Last night, after a little web surfing, I shut down my home desktop and went to bed. This morning, when I went to turn on the desktop, I noticed that the CD drive tray was out. When I turned on the machine, it wouldn't boot. I checked the BIOS and discovered that the boot drive had been changed from the drive with the operating system to one of the data drives.

Needless to say, I hadn't made any changes to the BIOS.

I changed the boot drive designation back to the correct drive and the machine booted and ran fine.

Ghosts? Poltergeist? A sentient computer?

Definitely a poltergeist! ;)

You're not one of those sleepwalker? :p

Does Gary Busey live in your neighborhood?

Motherboard battery is dead.

HTSC

**** happens
 

It really does. I've had a Dell 620 replaced recently. Nothing wrong with it as far as the diagnostics could tell but massive data corruption on the hard disk would take it out in under a day. Same hard disk, different unit and all (crossed fingers, crossed toes, touch wood) is fine so far.

Thank goodness it's a work laptop and not a personal laptop (one of our IT guys has had Dell flatly refusing to do anything because "nothing is wrong").

Or power surge/glitch.

It is due to FM.

What would the radio have to do with it?

FM = "Fantom Modulation"? ;)

Nope -- otherwise more than just a single value would have changed. It's also a brand new motherboard.

No, though according to my wife, I'm a sleep talker. If I talk the talk, maybe I walk the walk. ;)

If this is a new motherboard, I'd say you have an unstable BIOS. Download the latest update and reflash it.

Automatic updates can also do this.

Back when everyone listened to only AM radio there were never any personal computer problems. Then as people moved from the AM to the FM band the number of computer related problems began to increase. Now with everyone listening to only the FM band the number of strange computer problems is at pandemic levels. Clearly, FM radio signals are to blame.

My research over the last 33 years indicates that the only temporary solution to this, until we can turn off all of the FM radio stations, is to hold your mouth right and stand on your left foot. This will often resolve these problems for a while. If neither of these works, then you should go to the nearest mirror to observe your aura. If the aura around your head is blue, then there is no hope. Only those with green auras can successfully solve these sorts of computer problems.

Cue twilight zone...

F-ing Magic.