Hey everyone,
First I just want to say I am pretty knowledgable with computers for the most part. The problem is with my mothers HP computer. She has a A1000 HP Pavilion which is about 5 years old. I came to her house to help fix her computer and for some reason will not boot past the windows xp splash screen. Whenever it goes to that screen it will restart, and not go any further. Anyways, I have been doing a little bit of searching on google and found out that it may be the harddrive failing.
Just to double check, I used an Windows XP recovery disk and reformatted the computer, but once it starts up again it does the exact same thing.
I took apart the computer and removed the CMOS battery for 10 seconds and put it back in and also removed the harddrive. The question I have is, if the harddrive is "failing" would the computer be able to recognize the drive when I reformat?, because it did. I found the exact model harddrive on Amazon, but I am unsure if this is even the problem, and I don't want to buy it if it's not.
Any other suggestions on things to try? Or is there a way to find out what is causing this?
Also, the screen that pops up when It restarts is that it says something about recently installed hardware that is corrupted, which I know my mother did not install anything. I also unplugged every usb drive, so I don't think this is the problem. I then get a blue screen every once in awhile saying to restart and says something about the bios, but like I said cannot get past the splash screen.
Sorry this may be alot of information, but does anyone have any other suggestions?
First I just want to say I am pretty knowledgable with computers for the most part. The problem is with my mothers HP computer. She has a A1000 HP Pavilion which is about 5 years old. I came to her house to help fix her computer and for some reason will not boot past the windows xp splash screen. Whenever it goes to that screen it will restart, and not go any further. Anyways, I have been doing a little bit of searching on google and found out that it may be the harddrive failing.
Just to double check, I used an Windows XP recovery disk and reformatted the computer, but once it starts up again it does the exact same thing.
I took apart the computer and removed the CMOS battery for 10 seconds and put it back in and also removed the harddrive. The question I have is, if the harddrive is "failing" would the computer be able to recognize the drive when I reformat?, because it did. I found the exact model harddrive on Amazon, but I am unsure if this is even the problem, and I don't want to buy it if it's not.
Any other suggestions on things to try? Or is there a way to find out what is causing this?
Also, the screen that pops up when It restarts is that it says something about recently installed hardware that is corrupted, which I know my mother did not install anything. I also unplugged every usb drive, so I don't think this is the problem. I then get a blue screen every once in awhile saying to restart and says something about the bios, but like I said cannot get past the splash screen.
Sorry this may be alot of information, but does anyone have any other suggestions?