I do not fully understand what has/is happening. My take on your 
description is that you have a computer that used to run XP, was 
unplugged from AC power for some period of time, and now is plugged back 
into AC power. When you start it up, it only boots to the A drive (a 
floppy drive) and after some period of time the computer powers off and 
restarts all by itself with the same results over and over again.

When it arrives at the A drive, is there a message such as "no system 
disk found, insert one and press any key"?

Is "Cntrl F8" intended to open the BIOS on your computer? What do you 
mean by "selected ... return"? If you were in the BIOS, how did the 
computer exit the BIOS and try to restart?

Initially it sounds as if the CMOS battery discharged and/or failed 
during the period of inactivity. Assuming it only needs to be recharged 
and *will *accept a charge, leaving the computer plugged into AC power 
overnight should get it back up to speed. I would probably avoid the 
likely frustration of a failing battery and simply replace the battery. 
Then I would go into the BIOS (procedure can vary by type of BIOS on the 
motherboard) and start checking and resetting the various setups. In 
particular, I would make sure the BIOS is properly acknowledging  the 
hard drive, floppy drive, any optical drive, and RAM. I would reset the 
BIOS settings to "safe default" (or some similar wording). After I was 
satisfied with the settings, I would tell the BIOS to "remember the 
settings and exit/restart" (or some similar wording).

If the foregoing does not help, please post again with added information 
so others can try to help.

Tom

On 3/23/2010 1:47 PM, Ralph Hunter wrote:
> Hi
> I have Windows xp and had disconnected it. when I turned it back on it would only boot to the A drive and then loop around. I hit Cntrl F8 and selected the hard drive with the arrows and hit return but all it does is continue to loop around and not  bring up the system.  Am I suposed to hit another command to make it change to the hard drive?
> thanks.
> Ralph Hunter
>

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