C762NR Cannot do system restore

I bought a used Compaq C762NR laptop. I have recovery disks from HP for this model. The computer I bought had a blank hard disk. I booted the laptop, opened the CD drawer, put in disk 1 and rebooted. I had to reboot a couple times, but eventually the files from the CD loaded and the system restore manager started. I hit next and the message came up at the top Insert 1 (which was already in) and at the bottom "please wait." I waited about 10 minutes, seeing no disk activity light, so I hit the cancel button, figuring that maybe another reboot and restart would help.

At that point, the CD wouldn't eject when I pushed the button. Also, when I rebooted, it took about 20 times or more longer than normal to get into the BIOS. I still couldn't eject the CD after reboot. I reloaded default settings in the BIOS, but no change. Getting into the BIOS takes over a minute after F10, and the CD will not eject or boot. I eventually had to use a paper clip in the emergency release to get the CD out.

One possibility is that an HP Compaq system restore CD flashes the BIOS, and somehow I interrupted it in mid-process. In that case, it may never recognize the CD again. However, I was under the impression that a system restore would not affect the BIOS. It should only reload the disk. The BIOS memory test for both disk and memory come up clean, so those don't appear to be the problem.

Is the problem a flaky motherboard? I have never before enountered this phenomenon of a huge slowdown in computer speed, out of the blue. It takes probably 20 seconds after I hit F10 before the BIOS opens. The BIOS keys message time delay is set to zero, so that's not the problem. I have also not encountered a situation where the CD drive won't eject when the button is pressed.

Any thoughts on this would be appreciated.

 

Try a clean install and see if you can complete it

 

Looks like I found the problem. It's heat related. If I leave the laptop cool down and then boot it, the CD light illuminates, but then when the machine warms up the CD freezes. I'll have to check whether there's enough thermal gel between the heat sink and the cpu. Anyway, it doesn't seem to be a BIOS issue.