Have a new HP Pavillion 734N that we purchased rebuilt.
Worked wonderful for two months and then all went down
hill. Now whenever the computer has been idle for 3 or
more hours and you go to use it, you get a black screen
that says System disk boot error, insert disk and press
enter. There is not disk in the A drive. We are running
Windows XP Home/ Norton Anti Virus and that is it. Is
there anything in Windows XP that could be causing this
boot problem? We have had to do System restore twice in
the past week. Sometimes we can hit Alt/Ctrl/Del and it
will reboot okay. Sometimes this error hits when were
online and knocks us off, but mostly after the computer
has been idle. Sort of like it has it's own internal clock.
Help!

ktsamis wrote:

> Have a new HP Pavillion 734N that we purchased rebuilt.
> Worked wonderful for two months and then all went down
> hill. Now whenever the computer has been idle for 3 or
> more hours and you go to use it, you get a black screen
> that says System disk boot error, insert disk and press
> enter. There is not disk in the A drive. We are running
> Windows XP Home/ Norton Anti Virus and that is it. Is
> there anything in Windows XP that could be causing this
> boot problem? We have had to do System restore twice in
> the past week. Sometimes we can hit Alt/Ctrl/Del and it
> will reboot okay. Sometimes this error hits when were
> online and knocks us off, but mostly after the computer
> has been idle. Sort of like it has it's own internal clock.
> Help!

It very much sounds like your problems are caused by failing hardware
and not by your operating system. Here are generic hardware
troubleshooting steps:

1) open the computer and run it open, cleaning out all dust bunnies and
observing all fans (overheating will cause system freezing); 2) test
the RAM - I like Memtest86 from www.memtest86.com - let the test run
for an extended (like overnight) period of time - unless errors are
seen immediately; 3) test the hard drive with a diagnostic utility from
the mftr.; 4) the power supply may be going bad or be inadequate for
the devices you have in the system; 5) test the motherboard with
something like TuffTest from www.tufftest.com. Testing hardware
failures often involves swapping out suspected parts with known-good
parts. If you can't do the testing yourself and/or are uncomfortable
opening your computer, take the machine to a good local computer repair
shop (not a CompUSA or Best Buy type of store).

Good luck,

Malke
--
Elephant Boy Computers
www.elephantboycomputers.com
"Don't Panic!"