I've got an HP/Compaq NC6000. The comp runs fine for awhile, but when it heats up, it seems to lock up. A reboot causes random read errors or NTLDR missing errors. I suspected a bad hard drive, so I swapped with a good running hard drive and a ghosted image of the first drive, only it will not boot from said good drive. It says "error loading disk, press ctrl-alt-delete". I tried to do a blank install of windows XP, but halfway through loading the OS, it gets to the 34mins remaining screen and it just stays there. The computer does not freeze up, but it sits at that screen playing the various windows animations and scroll bars indefinately.
I swapped in extra ram and tried to boot a bootable linux CD-rom, which boots but it takes and EXTREMELY long time to boot. I tried booting a bootable windows MINpe disk, and it also loads but it takes awhile to do so. Finally, I swapped in a known, working optical drive and tried all again with the same results.
So to sum this up, swapped in new hard drive, new ram and new optical drive with the same faults.
What else could it be? Bad motherboard? bad processor? Bad fan? Whenever the laptop runs for more than a few minutes and heats up, things grind to a hault. It sat on the windows installation screen for 11 hours with no progress.
I swapped in extra ram and tried to boot a bootable linux CD-rom, which boots but it takes and EXTREMELY long time to boot. I tried booting a bootable windows MINpe disk, and it also loads but it takes awhile to do so. Finally, I swapped in a known, working optical drive and tried all again with the same results.
So to sum this up, swapped in new hard drive, new ram and new optical drive with the same faults.
What else could it be? Bad motherboard? bad processor? Bad fan? Whenever the laptop runs for more than a few minutes and heats up, things grind to a hault. It sat on the windows installation screen for 11 hours with no progress.