Compaq 2700 Help.

My dad recently gave me his really old notebook: a compaq Presario 2700. I've was using it for a while and then a lot of problems started arising. Right now it only turns on when connected to AC power even if the battery is at full charge. Then when it boots my desktop is a screen that says "your desktop has been shutoff as a precaution" and this program called PSGuard pops up immediately. After a couple minutes the whole thing just shuts itself off. I was wondering if anyone knew of any cheap fixes i could do, or if there's a way to just erase the hard drive and start over. Any help would be appreciated. thanks.

 

First, PSGuard is bad.

Second, your battery likely isn't holding a charge anymore. If you do a search you'll find batteries for as low as $60, maybe less. Just don't go and get yourself screwed, it's an old laptop so it's going to be tough finding a reputable source for parts.

PSGuard may or may not be causing the reboot. There's also a known issue with a faulty heatsink mount on this model. You can read a little (very little) more on it here.

I'd start out doing a reinstallation of Windows, it probably came with XP so you should be fine with being able to get security updates still. Hopefully you have restore disks, or there's a restore partition in tact, because hunting down drivers probably won't be fun. Alternatively, you could always give Linux a try. But anyway, after you have a fresh OS install you'll know which problems were caused by malware and a degraded Windows installation, and which are hardware related. If your battery still fails to work, you either have a bad battery, or there's something wrong with the power regulation inside the notebook. If you still spontaneously reboot, you either have a problem with heat, or the power regulation inside the notebook. Obviously replacing the battery is easier and cheapest, fixing the heatsink is a distant second. If it's a problem with power regulation... ebay it for parts.