Compaq Presario 2500 Blue Screen

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My Presario 2500 starts up and gets to the Windows XP screen then goes to a blue screen and stops. I have loaded a new "Compaq QuickRestore System Recovery" set of CDs but this does not solve the problem. When I use F8 / F10 to get to "Safe Start Mode" it sometimes goes into safe mode and sometimes not. When in safe mode everything seems to work. Do I have a flakey motherboard or processor or???
 
What error message are you given on the blue screen?

Navigate to C:\WINDOWS\Minidump and attach the .dmp file (if there are multiple, the one most relevant to the latest crash).
 
There are 434 different models of the Compaq Presario Laptop. Because of the wide sales and dispersion, there is a lot of experience with them. They have three main problems, besides inadequate memory:
hard drives fail early.
Screen inverters burn out early.
LCD problems with the screen and drivers are many.
Inadequate cooling because of poorly designed cooling channels.

First, download the latest driver set.
Second, upgrade the BIOS if it does not have the latest.
Third, clean out all the air channels as best you can using canned Dust Off, or other large can of Difluoroethane Gas cleaner. Do not use a vacuum cleaner or a blower, as they will generate way too much static electricity.
The machine was sold with 256 mb of memory. If it has not been upgraded to 512 or more, consider doing that... on up to the maximum of 1 GB in two 512 mb modules.
Yours must be about 4 years old. If so, the drive is probably gone... and possibly the LCD or the screen inverter.
Try installing a new hard drive. Pretty easy. One screw on most models. Then four screws to remove it from the caddy. You can find plenty of low cost hard drives at 40 GB, 60 GB, 80 GB, or 100 GB for $40 to $80... Seagate, Western Digital, Samsung, Hitachi, Toshiba, or Fujitsu. We recommend Seagate, Toshiba, or Western Digital in that order, and would not recommend the Samsung, Hitachi, or Fujitsu.
Install the drive, being sure your jumper is set to MASTER. Then boot to the Compaq recovery disc that came with your computer.
You should be up and running in about 14 hours. You may be able to rescue the data from the hard drive, but placing the drive in a desktopy computer using an adapter, then drag and drove the Files from Documents and Settings, then use ABC Recovery from www.majorgeeks.com to recover the Outlook Express email fails
Then, using Internet explorer, upgrade all your microsoft files to Internet Explorer 7, Media Player 11, DirectX 9c, and the Adobe files: Reader, Shockwave, Flash, and the other software you use.
Good luck. Let us know how it goes.
 
Thanks raybay.
I had already cleaned the fans by removeing the top cover and using compressed air. They were very dirty. Can it be the HD when I can get Windows to work in Safe Mode? Also the Compaq QuickRestore System Recovery disks I loaded were new from Compaq. Would the HD take the QuickRestore if it were bad?
 
Did you use Compressed Air, or Canned Air with Difluoroethane Gas such as Dust Off. Compressed Air, untreated, will often cause static electricity which can be fatal to a computer.

The hard drive can take the QuickRestore if it is bad. You don't know until you try to reboot or use. The QuickRestore will not detect that the first 8 sectors are bad, and those are the ones that will prevent a boot.

The problem may not be with the quick restore, but with the hard drive, if it is defective... getting the boot sectors installed within those first few sectors are critical... and often the restoration process does not have a way to detect if they have readable magnetic media. Sometimes the magnetic coating on the drive plates is rough or has bubbled up so the platter cannot be read. We're talking about shades of a micromillimeter here.
Best test is to remove the partition, reinstall the partition, reboot, then reinstall the software... if it doesn't boot, it is more likely the hard drive platter errors than the recovery disk set...
Best way to test is to use another hard drive, and see if the recovery set will install on the fresh hard drive.
 
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