XP grief... stall at splash screen when off > 1 hour

doug4350 · 14 Apr 2006

Hi Oddson,

How old is the unit???

How often does it get used???

How do you get it restarted after it's been off for an hour???

When it is off, is it really off or in stand-by mode??? Plugged in or on battery???

You can do the F-8 thing to boot into dos, safe mode or step through the driver load that might reveal some clues.

When it freezes, is the num-lock still active??? I consider this a "soft" lockup, as primarily the os is "stuck" somewhere, whereas if the numlock is not active, then the cpu has locked up indicating a more severe (possibly h/w) problem.

Grasping at straws, it could be a thermal problem where it's had a chance to cool off enough over an hour to open a connection somewhere. Nah, doubt it 🙂.

You could disable non-essential peripherals in cmos (i.e. usb, network, modem, etc.) to see if anything kicks out too.

Hope this helps... Aloha, Doug

oddson · 14 Apr 2006

How old is the unit???

2000

How often does it get used???

A few times a week.

How do you get it restarted after it's been off for an hour???

Safe mode (multiple reboots) - once it loads in safe it will boot up fine.

When it is off, is it really off or in stand-by mode???

Off - standby was freezing too but I assume that was the BIOS power management compatability with XP

Plugged in or on battery???

Plugg in now.. she used to turn her powerbar off all that time because somebody told her that was a good idea... I've hooked to to a separate surge protector so she doesn't interupt the power anymore.

Now the problem is I tried to reinstall XP (from a 2001 CD) in place but it gets into a loop at the point where it installs devices.

Can't get past it... won't go backk to previous installl....

I've really cocked it up now and I don't have a current XP install disc (damn computers don't seem to ship with installs anymore).

Thanks for your input...

Anyone know what I can do now??? 😕

doug4350 · 14 Apr 2006

Sounds like my initial suspicion (unrevealed). It feels more like a power drain is nuking a setting somewhere while it's off. Maybe a low cmos battery or something. Have you tried physically removing pcmcia's & the other non-essentials that you have access too??? I'm just going through the process of elimination which I'm sure you're doing too 🙂 .

It's been a while since I looked @ a compaq (and didn't do it frequenly), but I remember they came with a utility cd accompanying the os cd('s). Do you have those laying around??? They also had a "secret" boot partition that I believe f-10 at the right moment would boot into that for some "special" diag's. If you can get to those, you might want to also run a disk verify (as I just thought there might be a bad sector forming on the hd).

Kind of hard for me to be more effective w/out being in front of the thing, but glad to do what I can.

Compaq got scooped up by HP a few years ago. If you haven't already, you may want to go down this path:

http://search.hp.com/query.html?lang=en&submit.x=0&submit.y=0&qt=pressario+7400&la=en&cc=us

-- edit Duhhh, I was gonna mention this, being important too... You may (if you can) try reducing the ram ... -- edit

Hope this helps (some more 🙂 )... Aloha, Doug

oddson · 14 Apr 2006

Thanks Doug... I've left there for now.. but I have to go back.

Now the problem is I don't know how to undo the failed in-place install...

I'm tempted to go by a proper XP disk with SP2 on it but that's about

doug4350 · 14 Apr 2006

Sorry to hear that Oddson.

I believe you can do a fresh load w/out having to get the xp disk. Compaq should've provided all that, it's just a matter of shuffling through it.

If you're into hacking & experienced in dos, you could create a diskette from another xp system (format a: /s - the /s makes the diskette bootable) and go from there. I keep a win 3.1 (God I'm getting old 🙂 ) disk set and a '95 disk set to u/g from in these situations.

I really hate MS

I feel your pain bro 😇

I don't know how an u/g install disk would behave going backwards from xp to - say - '98... You may ask your m-i-l if you can "borrow" the unit for some faith healing 🙂 .

You may also (losing morals) wanna search google for win install hacks to get around the u/g install problem. I don't have a problem suggesting this since it is a legit problem. Everyone else, cover your eyes 😀 .

Aloha, Doug

skOre · 14 Apr 2006

oddson wrote: I really hate MS>>>

Well then, maybe there is a better solution.

What does she need it for? If its just email and surfing the web, have you considered ubuntu Linux? Its a breeze to install and works really great. You can also download a live-cd and install it from that afaik. It ships with all the browser, email and office (openoffice that is) stuff that I can think somebody who is a moderate user would need. And there are also video tutorials on google video if you feel like you need a hand installing it.

For the actual problems - It seems like something more buried, so maybe doug is on the right track here 🙂

oddson · 14 Apr 2006

Thanks guys... she's too old to learn a new OS... I'm going to start from scratch.... 😠 it's just that i'll have to load the 17 updates after I install XP and then worry about her ISP, email and everything else. She needs to have it set up so she just clicks on the stuff she needs and not have any technical issues to deal with...

Thanks again... maybe I'll post another thread about my own XP grief once I sort hers out. 😉

db · 14 Apr 2006

oddson wrote: Thanks guys... she's too old to learn a new OS... I'm going to start from scratch.... 😠 it's just that i'll have to load the 17 updates after I install XP and then worry about her ISP, email and everything else. She needs to have it set up so she just clicks on the stuff she needs and not have any technical issues to deal with...

Thanks again... maybe I'll post another thread about my own XP grief once I sort hers out. 😉

Sounds like you could save yourself a pile of grief next time by using Symantec Ghost to save image files of her/your hard drive. That way a restore from cd would be simple-just feed it restore cd/dvd, no updates or configs to set-already done! 🙂