Major computer trouble - can anyone help?

[Goldom]

So.. my main computer just totally died. It was on and running fine, when it starts beeping, and reboots. No video comes up, but everything else seems ok - from sounds, and I am able to shut it down from keyboard. I check inside, take out/put in video card, and turn it on. Video works ok then, but.. Bios/Cmos seems dead. It says had some error, loaded defaults. Then this voice comes from inside the box, I can't understand it put it sounds like it's saying something about a test. Then windows loads, everything seems ok. Windows lets me know it recovered from a serious error (duh) and would i like to report it. I try to, and realize it isn't finding my ethernet port anymore, so I can't get online. I turn it off, reboot, and once again get the voice from inside - and video goes out again. I turned it off and left it since.

Hard drive seems fine for now, so I'm going to wait until I can backup everything off it before I mess with the system any more. But is there anything I can do to save the machine? I have -no- idea what went wrong. I know if the motherboard is totally screwed, it's not any easier to fix than just buy a new one. Only thing I can think at all is trying to re-flash the bios, I mean, can't really make it any worse at this point.

Anyone have any idea what happened or if there's anything I can do?

[MiniMandaRuth]

1. Almost sounds like a virus....

I would have a professional look at. They can do wonders, as we found out...

[Xipe Totec]

2. If it's WIndows XP, it could be an update gone awry

Had that this morning. The reboot sequence was messed up so it kept cycling. I did a manual Windows update, it loaded four patches, rebooted and my baby is fine now.