HP Pavilion dv5000 issues with restart and screen

Bought an HP Pavilion dv5000 used (yes, I know, I know, don't say it) for my daughter, and have had problems from day 1. She turns it on, and most of the time the screen starts up, Windows starts to load and then it restarts.... and restarts...... and when it DOES load, most of the time it will load with a split screen, which then turns into 4 identical desktops, complete but tiny. The computer repair place says they can't fix it unless they can get it to malfunction, and so far it only happens at home. I am not the least bit computer savvy, and just don't know what to do. Any advice or suggestions?

 

I've never had the split screen issue but an old Omnibook 6000 I bought used started doing that and I ended up doing a Windows repair. That worked for quite awhile before I ended up doing a fresh install.

I'm not familiar with your laptop, aside from checking driver/startup details or Windows issue I'm not much help, sorry...

 

With 4 screens can she still do stuff? I just wondered if it works normal still.

Did you try reinstall the display driver yet?

What was the state of Windows when you bought it?, was it reinstalled like new? or was it just the way it was after the last owner used it for years.

Have you tried a total Recovery? Thats where it reinstalls Windows and everything back to when it used to be new. You would need Recovery discs or run Recovery right off the laptop, if its still on the hard drive....assuming the previous owner left everything intact.
That would eliminate stuff being corrupted, bad drivers, etc. But keep in mind, it will be like it was when new years ago. If she used it at all then anything she put on would be lost (photos, etc) so back up if possible. It would be back to when it would have been brand new so there won't be any recent Windows Updates, etc. You'd have to do all that again.

 

That's weird, never seen that happen on this model.

I myself have a dv5000, right now my mom has been using it.
I would say that the what Nilst mentioned is correct, that you might be good to reinstall the OS. If I remember correctly, to get to the recovery console is by pressing F8 or F10. Hope they did not delete the HP Recovery Partition.
As he mentioned backup.

Right now I have Windows 8 installed on the laptop and works faster than when it had xp. As I had an extra 160GB hard drive so I took out the 120GB with the XP installation and put in the 160GB and installed W8, mostly used it to try out and worked somewhat better than expected. So might save up and buy W8 when it comes out for that laptop.

Hope that it is only a reinstallation that you need to do.