Need help, strange PC behavior, no go to desktop

[~AlicGinnis~]

Hi,
This is a neighbor's hp pavillian circa 2000 running xp pro on 20 gig hard
drive with 256mb ram and 4x optical. The button battery may be dead, not
sure. Will check it later.
Symptom: Boots to logon window, then when you click on acct name, it starts
to load xp and then reverts to the logon screen. Does the same in Safe
mode.
What I tried prior to this post:
pulled the drive and put it in test bed as slave and ran various anti mal
ware aps, virus and trojans found and repaired. Reinstall, same problem.
XP repair from install CD, after repair, hung prior to log in screen.
3 attempts at full install frm 3 different xp cd's. Gets as far as
finishing formatting the drive, then reboots.
From a dos prompt zeroed the hard drive with clearhdd.exe then installed xp
pro creating new primary partiton, etc., and after format: same symptom.
Tried with xp home CD and XP pro CD. Same symptom: reboots after formatting
c drive NTFS.

Its not power, it runs all night without getting hot, or rebooting.

At this point I'm at a loss, any ideas much apprediated.
Thanks,
Al

 

[JR Weiss]

This is a neighbor's hp pavillian circa 2000 running xp pro on 20 gig hard
drive with 256mb ram and 4x optical. The button battery may be dead, not
sure. Will check it later.
Symptom: Boots to logon window, then when you click on acct name, it starts to
load xp and then reverts to the logon screen. Does the same in Safe mode.

Might be a bad hard drive.

Try fdisk /mbr

Then try the mfgr's HD diagnostic, if you can identify the drive.

Then try Spinrite (www.grc.com).

Then try a replacement HD.

 

[Flasherly]

Hi,
This is a neighbor's hp pavillian circa 2000 running xp pro on 20 gig hard
drive with 256mb ram and 4x optical. The button battery may be dead, not
sure. Will check it later.
Symptom: Boots to logon window, then when you click on acct name, it starts
to load xp and then reverts to the logon screen. Does the same in Safe
mode.
What I tried prior to this post:
pulled the drive and put it in test bed as slave and ran various anti mal
ware aps, virus and trojans found and repaired. Reinstall, same problem.
XP repair from install CD, after repair, hung prior to log in screen.
3 attempts at full install frm 3 different xp cd's. Gets as far as
finishing formatting the drive, then reboots.
From a dos prompt zeroed the hard drive with clearhdd.exe then installed xp
pro creating new primary partiton, etc., and after format: same symptom.
Tried with xp home CD and XP pro CD. Same symptom: reboots after formatting
c drive NTFS.

Its not power, it runs all night without getting hot, or rebooting.d

At this point I'm at a loss, any ideas much apprediated.
Thanks,
Al

Software<>hardware interaction thingy...one where the boot log may
offer insight as to where, what, or how far XP cares go. With that
memory it's stinkin' rank to put more than 98 on it, although I built
a slew computers, probably 5 or more years ago, for an office I was at
recently. Still running peachy, someone had updated them to XP, and
too bad at all with 512M. Asked me for a proposal when I started
muttering about USB compliancy issues with a 16G thumb drive I'd
brought, (while choking the power out of a hub), what it would take
for a hardware e$timation to redo everything up to fancy, he'd submit
and get approved by some commissioners. Does and runs what you need
to do, with a quick once over the staff -- nothing, said I. (And he
knows I don't like working on HPs, or whatever else I didn't build).

 

[Guest]

This is a neighbor's hp pavillian circa 2000 running xp pro on 20 gig hard
drive with 256mb ram and 4x optical. The button battery may be dead, not
sure. Will check it later.
Symptom: Boots to logon window, then when you click on acct name, it starts
to load xp and then reverts to the logon screen. Does the same in Safe
mode.
What I tried prior to this post:
pulled the drive and put it in test bed as slave and ran various anti mal
ware aps, virus and trojans found and repaired. Reinstall, same problem.
XP repair from install CD, after repair, hung prior to log in screen.
3 attempts at full install frm 3 different xp cd's. Gets as far as
finishing formatting the drive, then reboots.
From a dos prompt zeroed the hard drive with clearhdd.exe then installed xp
pro creating new primary partiton, etc., and after format: same symptom.
Tried with xp home CD and XP pro CD. Same symptom: reboots after formatting
c drive NTFS.

Its not power, it runs all night without getting hot, or rebooting.

All that but you didn't first measure voltages (+12V, +3.3V, +5V, and
Vcore) and run the hard drive manufacturer's diagnostic?

 

[Marty]

Hi,
This is a neighbor's hp pavillian circa 2000 running xp pro on 20 gig
hard drive with 256mb ram and 4x optical. The button battery may be
dead, not sure. Will check it later.
Symptom: Boots to logon window, then when you click on acct name, it
starts to load xp and then reverts to the logon screen. Does the same
in Safe mode.
What I tried prior to this post:
pulled the drive and put it in test bed as slave and ran various anti
mal ware aps, virus and trojans found and repaired. Reinstall, same
problem. XP repair from install CD, after repair, hung prior to log in
screen. 3 attempts at full install frm 3 different xp cd's. Gets as far
as finishing formatting the drive, then reboots. From a dos prompt
zeroed the hard drive with clearhdd.exe then installed xp pro creating
new primary partiton, etc., and after format: same symptom. Tried with
xp home CD and XP pro CD. Same symptom: reboots after formatting c
drive NTFS.

Its not power, it runs all night without getting hot, or rebooting.

At this point I'm at a loss, any ideas much apprediated. Thanks,
Al

My sister's Pavillion had the *exact same* symptoms. The motherboard
capacitors had failed.

 

[~AlicGinnis~]

hmm...
thanks.

All that but you didn't first measure voltages (+12V, +3.3V, +5V, and
Vcore) and run the hard drive manufacturer's diagnostic?

 

[~AlicGinnis~]

thanks for ideas, will try them over the week end.

 

[~AlicGinnis~]

I never even thought of that. Thanks, I'll check.