HP laptop start up problems - Help please!

Hi all, wonder if you might be able to help me.

My HP Pavillion DV2188ea is having serious start up issues.

Basically, when I turn it on it comes up with the initial 'HP Invent' logo. Then straight away it goes to a black screen with a white underscore flashing in the top left corner. That's about all I get from it...it stays like that indefinitely so I can't get to windows or anything. I can run the Quick Play function which just plays DVDs and doesn't boot the laptop up but that's it. I guess it's likely to be a hard-drive or windows related problem?

If any one has any suggestions about what could be wrong and how I might fix it I'd be extremely grateful!

Thanks in advance,

Andy

 

reformat, probably sumthing wrong with your windows.

 

Try using a linux livecd first, so you'll be booting from something besides your main os. Knoppix is a good free one you can download and burn onto a cd-r. If it solves the problem, then it's somehting with your OS, else it's a hardware issue.

 

I would boot to an XP CD (into recovery console), then run a FixMBR and FixBoot commands to see if that fixes the problem.

 

Try something easy first. Remove and reinstall the hard drive and memory. Mine did that when it could not see or read the hard drive. After reinstalling the drive, mine worked fine. A failed drive will give those symptoms too.

Jim

 

Check your boot order in the BIOS...it may be trying to boot from another source instead of Windows. Failing that, a windows reinstall may be in order..

 

You can also use a Win98 boot cd, boot from it and in dos run this command:
fdisk /mbr

 

Thanks for the replies everyone...just wondering if you could explain this in a little more detail?

Thanks very much
Andy

 

Thanks for the replies all. Just wondering if you could expand a little on how I do this?

Thanks very much
Andy

 

Sorry about that didn't realise I had done that twice. Also read something about removing the CMOS battery to reset the BIOS, can anyone expand on this?

Thank you
Andy

 

on the underside of the laptop there are panels with screws, one panel with a picture of RAM and another of a harddrive. remove those panels, take the RAM and drive out and put them back in (adhering to ESD precautions of course) if u dont know how or havent done it before then perhaps you shouldnt try.

 

Hmm i tried booting it off a windows xp cd and tried to click 'Repair'

But it says there is no hard drive installed...

Does this mean my hard drive is screwed?


Thanks for your feedback
Andy

 

your hdd is sata... the windows xp cd you used does not have sata drivers... so it will not see the hdd
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it's not the bios...

it's the bootloader....

i could send you a small iso image that you can use to restore the standard windows xp bootloader on th MBR.... BUT you will lose the ability to boot into quickplay ( not entirely, you'll still be able to boot it by starting windows first and then setting smth and restarting)

pm me if interested

 

pm sent...but i'd like to try and keep quickplay fully functioning if possible

Don't suppose anyone has any other ideas? Would be much appreciated, getting a bit desperate now..!

Andy

 

ok, first go into your bios and disable SATA, restart with the xp CD. now u can install XP. after installing XP, you can install SATA drivers again and enable SATA. read on the Reformat guide.

 

cheers for the reply. im guessing i'll lose all my data then?

 

...you cant even access your data anyways.. dosnt make difference.,

 

hmm oh well.

I tried putting my hard drive in my brothers computer (he has the exact same model) and it did the exact same thing..flash HP logo, then just black screen with flashing cursor.

Does that mean anything...?

 

Yea, that means you have either corrupted data or your hard drive has physically gone bad.

 

I don't think the drive is bad. It's just corrupted MBR or Windows messed up.

If you have a chance, connect your harddrive as a secondary drive on any computer (with the help of a converter) make backups of the important data and burn it on a CD or a DVD.

Put the drive back in your notebook. Make a fresh windows install (as stated in post #15 by HP fan).

Copy the backups from the CD/DVD.