If so, your BIOS is on the hard drive, and your problems may be of a whole different sort.

My wife's laptop has the same error. To get it up and going, we go into the bios when it starts up, then press F10 to save and exit, and let it start up normally. I just asked her, and she has the key strokes memorized: F10, F10, and Enter (all at the appropriate times).