Early 2000 or 2001 compaq

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onesmartidiot

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my friend has a compaq 5000a, its got a celeron processor and came with windows millenium. it carshed, his mom paid some ******* to put windows 98 on it, it sooned crashed again. now im working on it, and successfully put xp pro and ubuntu 5.10 on a grub loader boot thingie.

it worked great for a week then fritzed. it takes forever to leave the red compaq load logo (if it does) then it does this pretty show of colors until you reset it. now ive heard that compaq is proprietory to its own hardware software. so is it true that for this thing to work i have to find the compaq millenium disc for it to work?
 
The windowsME cd that came with the pc is only set to be recognised by that pc only, so when you attempt to load it onto another pc it won't work, legaly of course. You can still put whatever software/OS you wish on that PC other than the WinME that came with it. That part is not restricted in. Otherwise if say you installed a new motherboard that is totaly different to the one you have now your WinMe cd may not work on it, since it recognise that its a different pc or something along those lines...

Hardware, it may be proprietry as in custom designed parts (especialy motherboards, PSU or rams). If it has a problem with crashing, then its most likely to be some hardware fault, since you've tried different OS's and i presume different drivers as well..
 
When the Compaq logo is on its really doing a hardware check, if its hanging its likely a sign that something is wrong. Perhaps bad ram or cpu or motherboard.

The only proprietary hardware that would be in that is the motherboard and power supply. Neither of which are going to screw with your operating system, we know that because you managed to get Ubuntu installed.

The colors may indicate that the onboard (I'm assuming its onboard) video is screwed up. See if you can find an old PCI graphics card to toss in it. Also check in the BIOS and see if there is a way you can turn off the Compaq splash screen so you can actually see the POST results.
 
so when it says compaq the onboard video works, but after that it dosent?
-ill look for my old rage 3d card

memory or hard drive may be bad (will test hdd tonight)
-where are cheap parts to toss in this thing, if its more than 50 bucks to fix its not worth it.

mobo batt might be dead
- where is it located

ill find the link to the article that told about different o/s's on compaqs
 
Best places for parts are friends or locally owned computer shops. Hard drive likely isn't bad, but thats easy to test.

Motherboard battery wouldn't cause these problems, but you can check and see if its bad by unplugging the whole machine for a minute or 2 then booting up and going into the bios and checking the date. If you just look around on the motherboard you should be able to find the battery, its the only thing that looks like a battery.
 
my way of testing it would be to hook the hdd up to my pc with an ide to usb connector. is there a better way to tell if its good or not?
 
If that machine came with Win Me it may not have been tested by Compaq for XP or there are updated files at their site, that you need
 
Liquidlen said:
If that machine came with Win Me it may not have been tested by Compaq for XP or there are updated files at their site, that you need
Click to expand...
It doesn't realy matter about compaq testing Xp or not.. Runing a particular OS is all about meeting and surpassing the minimum hardware specs needed and the availability of drivers for that particular OS.

The only updates you'd probably need is just new drivers for winxp to use, and the security updates from the Windows Update site..
 
N3051M said:
It doesn't realy matter about compaq testing Xp or not.. Runing a particular OS is all about meeting and surpassing the minimum hardware specs needed and the availability of drivers for that particular OS.

The only updates you'd probably need is just new drivers for winxp to use, and the security updates from the Windows Update site..
Click to expand...

It does matter if Compac (or any largr Manufacturer ) tests machines for updates. If the particular software is proprietary it is best to use their update( Especially Laptops),if they did not test Windows update will work fine.
 
sorry for taking too long

sorry for being awhile, just had some other things that needed done.

alrighty, i didnt test the battery, to tell the truth i forgot to untill i reread this post.

second, i tossed in an old ati rage pci card and it worked. it loaded the grub loader and let me choose between o/s's

BUT

now it shows the win xp logo with loader, then goes to open windows, but hangs on the blank screen between them. however safe mode lets you go through windows and stuff. ubuntu does its loader thing then hangs on the black screen with a blinking curser.

i think the hdd is fine because safe mode let me explore the files and use the machine.but ill do some diag. on it and double check.

i figured out it has 2X64 mb sticks of memory.
 
Not enough RAM to run XP halfway decently.
When you boot into XP via Safe Mode, uninstall the current graphics drivers, and replace them with those ATI Rage ones (I think though that XP supports them natively).
Then add some RAM and try again.
 
i dont see how it cant run windows or linux halfway decent because it ran both (win/Linux) smoothly for hours before the video gave up.

ill do the drivers thing next
 
windows xp requires 64mb of memory to run

i reloaded xp again and didnt bother with linux

then i set all the settings to best performance, gave it SP2 with all 59 updates and its goin good now.

it turnes on and off over and over and dosent freeze or lockup.

come saturday it gets roxio and if it lives through that it gets out of my room! :)

should i check compaq for xp updates or what?
(what would it be called?)
 
onesmart***** said:
windows xp requires 64mb of memory to run

i reloaded xp again and didnt bother with linux

then i set all the settings to best performance, gave it SP2 with all 59 updates and its goin good now.
Click to expand...

Being so old, I suggest that you turn off the eye candy for best performance.
 
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