my computer started smelling like something was burning |
I would say something may have been toasted here.
If you have the drives on one adapter (e.g., Primary adapter [IDE 0]), try connecting to the secondary adapter and booting.
Before booting, I would try pulling all but one stick of RAM and checking all connections for your Power Supply Unit, Video card, and IDE adapter.
Boot to BIOS and verify all devices are recognized and then boot from CD. If all goes well, try rebooting to the BIOS and boot to the hard drive to see if Windows will load. If you end up at the boot options screen, select "Last Known Good Configuration" and see if boot is possible.
If the CD was working, and the hard disc fails, you may have a corrupt MBR and/or drive data (unless of course the drive died).
Note - before checking these, smell the PSU (power supply unit) to see if that is what created the smell, and as always, ground yourself on the PSU housing before touching any components in the case.
Just a couple things to try.