Presario V2000 Bios Boot Not

Hello again! I have been given a Compaq Presario V2000 w/AMD Sempron - which does this:

it produces two short beeps while booting to Compaq screen and shows "press esc" for boot etc.. and then goes to a black screen that says "press f1 to resume, or f2 to setup". Except nothing happens when any key is pressed.

I tried using a USB keyboard but still no response, I unplugged the laptop's keyboard and plugged in only the usb keyboard and still, nada.

Knoppix Live CD inserted and the machine just hangs on the same screens and does not load anything... none of the keys work. It does spin the optical drive at every boot attempt though, whether or not there is a cd in there.

I've taken out and re-seated the ram, swapped the ram positions, tried each one individually in each spot as well - always the same, except of course when there is no ram... then it goes beep nuts lol!

From what I have read this happens pretty frequently on this particular model - in this exact way - the fellow who gave it to me said it was working one day and the next he got "the screens". To him it is old and he has 2 other laptops so he gave it to me. So now I've learned it happens a lot - BUT - no one has posted (that I could find) how to actually fix it.

From HP I gather my beep codes (2 beep with 2 light flashes at caps/lock) mean corrupt bios - but if I can't get to the bios how can I help it recover?

This is a pretty nice machine, very little wear and seems shameful not to bring it back to life - my Gram could fit this right next to her sewing machine and play scrabble with me if it worked!

Any suggestions/experience with this situation out there?

Cheers!

ps: It didn't have any problem charging up it's battery which was dead when he gave it to me, it charged in about 5 hours and the charge light went off, and now only comes on if it's drained a little so it seems to be fine as far as power sources go.

I have also tried taking out the battery and doing the hard re-set, and taken out the cmos battery for 20 mins as well... and yet, no joy :cry:

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For those who may land here seeking a solution to this issue - although this older model Presario and combination AMD cpu w/ ATI gpu was not mentioned in the multitudes of "HP failures" begging for recall and reflow rants on the net - I went ahead and baked this baby as per the instructions widly available out there.

It worked, and it's running now - so the moral of the story? Try every remedy you read that even remotely resembles your issues - you can't break a broken board after all....

 

winterbagel,
it sounds like you were able to recover from a dead BIOS using "the instructions widly(sic) available out there", but after a couple hours searching I cannot find anything that seems to apply.

Would you mind terribly posting exactly what you did to restore your CPQ V2000 to life??

Thanx,
e