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    Compaq boot hangup problem

    Discussion in 'HP' started by pr383413, Apr 25, 2006.

  1. pr383413

    pr383413 Newbie

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    Hi. I have a Compaq Presario 2100. Recently when I turn on my laptop it goes to the black screen where it says compaq and it does not boot up. There are options to enter the setup or press escape to change the boot order, but when you try to go to any of these options the computer freezes. I looked at the HP website and this was no help. If anyone has any ideas for me please let me know. Thanks so much.
     
    pr383413, Apr 25, 2006
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  2. Sidicas

    Sidicas Notebook Consultant

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    Sounds like a boot manager problem. Did you mess around with reinstalling Windows/Linux/etc. recently? Is the laptop plugged into a monitor? I noticed my screen will go black until I press Fn+F4 to get it to show properly on both the monitor and the laptop display. It could also be a bad hard drive.. 1. Try Fn+F4 2. Try fixing your MBR (back in the old days, we would do this by booting a floppy, and then running fdisk /mbr) Probably what you can do nowadays is insert the Windows XP Setup disk and choose to repair windows. My Compaq came with the original Windows XP Disks as well as a Recovery DVD. Not sure if you were quite as lucky. 3. Bad Hard Drive?

    EDIT: Wait, you said it freezes when you enter the BIOS Menu? Sounds like bad CPU, Motherboard, and/or RAM. Enter Setup, and look at all the options.. Does the computer freeze? Is it that you're saying that it freezes when you change the boot order/ try to load an OS? If that is the case, then look at the 1. 2. 3. above.
     
    Sidicas, Apr 25, 2006
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  3. pr383413

    pr383413 Newbie

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    It freezes if i try to get into the bios or setup, no matter what i try to do it freezes before going to a new screen and i tried to load a suse live disc when i turn on the comp and it didnt read it.
     
    pr383413, Apr 25, 2006
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  4. Sidicas

    Sidicas Notebook Consultant

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    CPU/Mobo/RAM.

    Grab memtest86, throw it onto a bootable CD, and see you can get that to load. Its much smaller than any Linux distro. If it runs for 10 minutes, then your RAM is fine.
    If it doesn't run, then you're back to a CPU/Mobo/RAM problem.

    It could also be that the BIOS wasn't flashed properly (ie: Someone started a BIOS update on the machine and then shut off the system before it could finish writing all the data to Flash).. In either case, you'll probably have to send the laptop in to a shop to be fixed. [In other words, I'm out of ideas.]

    　
     
    Sidicas, Apr 25, 2006
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  5. pr383413

    pr383413 Newbie

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    Thank you very much for your help, i figured it was a mobo problem and that I would have to send it in, but you helped tremendously.
     
    pr383413, Apr 26, 2006
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  6. Szadek

    Szadek Notebook Geek

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    On some notebooks (HP compaq nc6120, 6110, 6220, 6230, 8230) Reseating the optical drive can correct this.
     
    Szadek, Apr 27, 2006
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