Bad processor or what?

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Hello to all, and I'm glad I found such a good forum. I'm hoping I can find someone to help me solve an issue. Thanks to anyone who can give me any feedback or suggestions.





I'll start from the beginning.
I had the problem on & off for 1-2 months, but seldom.
When the computer was turned on, it would go to the blue HP screen (press F1 for setup, F10 for recovery) and freeze on that screen. After turning it off and on a couple/few times it would come up ok. No problems once it was running.
Problem became more frequent, and did a restore back to before I remember the problem starting.
It got so I just wouldn't shut it off.
Then the other day my son turned it off and it won't come back up since.

What I've tried:
Tried to get it to boot with disk I got from the microsft site.
Also tried a boot disk made from winternals (ERD Commander)
I also tried to reboot from the HP's recovery disks.

I enabled the boot diagnostic screen to get rid of the blue screen. The post seems to go ok up to a point.
It recognizes my floppy, the HD and my CD RW and DVD Rom. After the CD RW the post sceen goes black & nothing happens.
If I start with a disk in the CD RW drive, it does the same thing, but the light for the drive stays on (permanently) I can here the drive spinning for about 15 seconds, and the light for the HD is on, but then the light goes out, the drive stays quiet, and the screen goes black. The fan stays running inside.

I can get into BIOS via F1 and I've tried all possible combinations in the boot priority menu.
I have disconnected all cables from the motherboard one at a time and together and tried to restart. I have pulled the CPU, checked and reseated it.

Nothing seems to work, or even change the results except:
When the memory card was out it wouldn't even come on and when the 3.5 floppy was disconnected it gives me a disk error.
Also I get no beeps during the startup.
My BIOS is Phoenix version 3.24

I listed my BIOS settings in a different thread. I will move 'em here in another post.


So, am I to understand that if I can access BIOS then my CPU is ok? Could it be a problem with the bios chip itself?

And does it sound like the POST is successful, or is it freezing towards the end?

And, if the BIOS is detecting the drives, why can't I get them to boot? It would seem to me that since I can hear the drives kick into action, then it's making it to the boot step, but something is going wrong at that point.

Sorry for all the questions, but I'm tring to brainstorn this. Any input would be a big help. And please ask any questions you need for clarification.

Oh one other thing, how should the jumpers be set on my drive(s) to make sure they are set up properly to boot from.

Thank you
Rusty
 
in your case, getting it looked at by a technician would be wise.

sounds liek a problem with either the motherboard or psu (both of notable crappiness on hp systems). both require a technician with experience and tools to properly diagnose.

your drives should have jumpers on the back, the one at the end of the ribbon cable is always master. if there is another drive on the middle connector, that will be set to slave. sata cables support one drive and jumpers are not involved.
 
Hi
You might want to look at the capacitors on the mobo. If they are domed, bulged, have stuff leaking out onto the mobo, that's your problem. I have seen this many times. The fix is to replace the caps or the mobo.
 
I pulled the mobo and inspected. Nothing obvious. 'Spose I'll need to get it in to a tech to test it. If it is the mobo, wouldn't I be better off replacing the CPU also to make sure they're compatible, or replace the mobo with another, identical one?

Also, to get my files from the HD, can't I just pull it out and put it into my new machine as an extra HD? How would I do this? I'm guessing plug it into the slave spot on the cable. Will bios find it automatically on start-up (yes/no/maybe)?
 
Hi
If the mobo is bad, you can save money by staying with the present cpu. You can probably match the mobo but from an oem maker it may be rather expensive. If the cpu was bad I doubt if you would get any post at all. All the other parts may be ok as well, I would test the ram in a known good box with memtest86 or the like. Then determine what you want to do as far as a new case if needed, mobo, etc. Your hard drive should do fine as a slave or master in a different system. You might have to overcome a security feature that can keep you out of your old folders on the old drive when running under a new xp install on a different drive. Or you could do a repair of the old drive/install on a new system.
Some thoughts for you.
 
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