HP Pavilion 533W Not Booting

  • Thread starter Thread starter Mark & Denise
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Mark & Denise

As always, I get to fix my in-laws computer bought at Wal-Mart. I told them
to take it back the second I saw it. My computer's specs are a little lower
than theirs, and runs much faster.

Okay, after a short power failure of a few seconds or more, the computer
will not boot into Windows XP Home Edition.
I get the POST screen, I can get into BIOS, otherwise it will show a message
that the computer was not shut down, and give me the option to go into Safe
Mode, Last Known Good Configuration, etc. Choosing any of these, shuts the
computer off right away. The power LED on the front of the tower goes from
green to orange. I then have to hold down the power button to shut it off
and try again. If I try and press F10 to go into HP's Recovery Console, it
starts to load up, but then shuts down. Using my machine, I created a MS-DOS
boot disk. It will load with it, but as soon as I do a DIR command on C:,
the computer shuts down. Any ideas? I think the harddrive has somehow
partially died, but am I missing the obvious, and ignoring another problem
that's causing it? When I opened up the tower, everything looked fine. I
reseated some components too. The harddrive has its IDE cable and a power
cable. What I found different was a single black wire goes along the IDE
cable to the drive. That is something I've never come across yet.
Thank you in advance!
Mark
 
Power failure? Like losing elecrtrical power, then coming back on again? Could
be a power spike associated with the return of power caused some damage. The
power supply is the most likely damaged part.

First, download MEMTEST-86, the best and a free memory tester. Create a
bootable floppy and run it. If the computer successfully runs MEMTEST-86 for
several test cycles with no errors and no shutdowns, the motherboard and memory
are probably OK. If the computer shuts down running MEMTEST-86, I would first
replace the power supply or test the computer again by attaching another known
good power supply.

Next, determine the make and model of hard drive, download and run the drive
manufacturer's diagnostics. You can do this in DOS mode without booting
Windows. If the computer runs the drive diagnostics without error, you will
have isolated another good component.

But I still think it's the power supply. HP power supplies are pretty cheap
brands and often with wattage on the low side. Computers do not often shut
themselves off... Ben Myers
 
It was like a brown out where the power went away for a second or less and
came back, but no sitting in the dark outtage. It's on a surgeprotector,
though it may be a cheap crappy one, plus there is no protection for the
phone line coming into the modem.
Update:
Tried a spare harddrive. Booted off a floppy and it read the spare
harddrive. Booting off a floppy into the original harddrive only shows the
Restore partition. Probably due to the disk being a MS-DOS boot disk, made
through WinXP. I'm leaning towards it being a fried powersupply, as it will
even shut down if I'm in BIOS for a minute or two. Next step is to retry
removing the modem, and power it up, after that I'll try removing and
rebuilding the computer's components. I did clean out the massive amount of
dust bunnies inside, they live in the country, and he smokes, so it was
alot. And where I said below there is an extra wire, that just turns out to
be a little handle on the connector.
Thanks everyone,
Mark
 
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