I am taking my time to fix our home PC, but I think I am stuck. So I wonder if my readers could help me out here.
This machine is around 6 years old. It is a HP Pavilion 513x:
It died around a month ago. On startup, it would go into the “cannot boot” page, where you could pick the “last good”, “minimal boot”, “boot without network”, “boot into command line”, etc. None worked. I then used Knoppix to get important files out.
Then it was time to rebuild the system. I got hold of XP SP2 install CD and started the process. I asked the installer to completely reformat the hard drive. After that was done, the install process started copying files. When that was over, it was time to reboot. Normally, after the reboot, the rest of the install process would continue to finish. No big deal, I’ve done that many times before.
This time it was different, however. Upon reboot, nothing would happen. All I saw was a blank screen. I then powered on and off a few more times, still no joy.
The odd thing was, when I powered the machine by pressing down the switch for 10 seconds or so, the machine would go off, but the Num Lock indicator on the keyboard would still be on.
I’d still like to keep using this computer. In fact, I’ve got some Rosetta Stone language software that I’d like to use on this box. If you have some ideas, dear reader, I am all ears.
3 responses to “PC Help Needed”
For the Num Lock indicator, something similar happened to me. I had to pull the power cable off of pc. That seemed to fix it temporarily till the next time shut down. I ended up replacing power supply. That fixed it. I recommend you try the same and see if you can complete the win xp installation.
Thanks Bulent.
I will try it. I have another HP Pavilion, 10 year old now, at home, which is sort of my playground where I generally load Linux on it. I will see if I can use that power supply for testing. I will report my findings once I am done.
[…] Reader Bulent’s comment gave me some ideas. I unplugged the existing power cable from the hard disk, and plugged in another available power cable, to see if that would make any difference. […]