Hi,
My next door neighbour came over and handed me over his 'just' out of warranty laptop asking me if i could have a look at it for him..
Anyway it was missing it's boot files.. Not a problem i told him, I'd get him all fixed up...
After spending a couple of hrs trying to fix the problem, i just decided to wipe the thing down and start again.. the recovery partition was also shot, so i tried using a standard retail ver of Vista.. It blue screened on me during installation..
So i tried a retail ver of XP, thing just hung while it was trying to initialize the network settings upon O/S installation..
Not being familiar with HP's in any way, I thought maybe it needs it's own proprietry version of the O/S.. So i ordered an HP recovery DVD, which contained all the drivers, O/S and recovery...
Ran that and at first it appears to install everything.. Upon first running when it tries to install it's own HP software, the thing crashes and then fails to boot up again, saying it's missing the winload.exe
ANYWAY... This thing is FAST becomming a pain in the backside.. Espeically as I'm not going to get any money for fixing the thing...
As far as i can see, there's no diagnostic software to tell what the problem is hardware wise...
It really could be anything.. memory, cpu, bad board, bad HD? I just don't know.. Is there any HP Diagnostic software that i can use that will tell me exactly what part needs to be replaced? There is no diags for me to boot into, and no O/S that i can get into to see what's going on...
Anyone familar with HP's? Dell for example provide 32-bit diagnostics that would tell me what component is failing...
I'm guessing it's the HD, but then i'm also questioning this as it allows me to get so far with the installations... Memory would probalby be more random crashes.. I just do not want to spend much more time on this.
[edit]
Just swapped over the memory and HD and re-running the recovery... If it still crashes after this, then he can just send it back to HP for a new mobo/CPU.. Did find some very basic diagnostics in the BIOS.
My next door neighbour came over and handed me over his 'just' out of warranty laptop asking me if i could have a look at it for him..
Anyway it was missing it's boot files.. Not a problem i told him, I'd get him all fixed up...
After spending a couple of hrs trying to fix the problem, i just decided to wipe the thing down and start again.. the recovery partition was also shot, so i tried using a standard retail ver of Vista.. It blue screened on me during installation..
So i tried a retail ver of XP, thing just hung while it was trying to initialize the network settings upon O/S installation..
Not being familiar with HP's in any way, I thought maybe it needs it's own proprietry version of the O/S.. So i ordered an HP recovery DVD, which contained all the drivers, O/S and recovery...
Ran that and at first it appears to install everything.. Upon first running when it tries to install it's own HP software, the thing crashes and then fails to boot up again, saying it's missing the winload.exe
ANYWAY... This thing is FAST becomming a pain in the backside.. Espeically as I'm not going to get any money for fixing the thing...
As far as i can see, there's no diagnostic software to tell what the problem is hardware wise...
It really could be anything.. memory, cpu, bad board, bad HD? I just don't know.. Is there any HP Diagnostic software that i can use that will tell me exactly what part needs to be replaced? There is no diags for me to boot into, and no O/S that i can get into to see what's going on...
Anyone familar with HP's? Dell for example provide 32-bit diagnostics that would tell me what component is failing...
I'm guessing it's the HD, but then i'm also questioning this as it allows me to get so far with the installations... Memory would probalby be more random crashes.. I just do not want to spend much more time on this.
[edit]
Just swapped over the memory and HD and re-running the recovery... If it still crashes after this, then he can just send it back to HP for a new mobo/CPU.. Did find some very basic diagnostics in the BIOS.
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