HP COMPAQ with no image to monitor..Help ?

number66

Try pressing "Delete" or F2 a few time just after you turn the machine on, should get you to the BIOS menu, also look at the screen to see if it recomends the key you need to press. This would probably go faster if you give as much info as you can when you get stuck. saying " press F10 for this F11 for that" does not give us much to work with

Dunlaffin

I just did a diagnostics check on it in the set up menu and it says the Cpu is Fine , the memory is fine than it says that the Boot path was not detected and to check that all drive cable are securely connected... ?

number66

well, not knowing the BIOS that that computer uses It's hard to make suggestions, maybe taking a picture of the menus would make it easier if you are up to that. You should be able to find a menu item that will show/search for connected HDD's, also there should be somewhere to set the Boot Device/Boot Order.
If this is a work computer did they wipe the HDD before giveing it to you ?

Dunlaffin

number66 wrote: »

well, not knowing the BIOS that that computer uses It's hard to make suggestions, maybe taking a picture of the menus would make it easier if you are up to that. You should be able to find a menu item that will show/search for connected HDD's, also there should be somewhere to set the Boot Device/Boot Order.
If this is a work computer did they wipe the HDD before giveing it to you ?

No its a rural small office. The boss doesnt know which end of a computer the pictures come out. Wiping a computer for him would involve a teatowel. No chance !

I went through the menus , there is very little options in them, just to selct a drive to boot from there are four drives listed and 3 are blank and the other has a name and numbers after it , so I set it to that one and saved. but it went straigh to the error message i posted earlier.
Mind you when I pulled out the vidoe card there was a kind of sucky pop noise , but there are no sucky type connectors (scuze the technical lingo) on the VC, could I have pulled a cable off something important by accident ?

number66

That drive could well be the DVD/CD drive, I assume there is one. Have a look at the HDD in the PC box and check the wires are secure, one should be a power supply and one a data bus. check to see if they are securly in their sockets at both ends.

Dunlaffin

No I cant see any loose cable, although there are a couple of unconnected cables but I presume they are for adding something. Ill go through the menus and look for anything significant and post a pic.

Procrastastudy

maybe post pics of the unplugged cables.

number66

And give the name of the drive the BIOS can see, It might not be the DVD drive.

Dunlaffin

Procrastastudy wrote: »

You can see the unplugged cables here. Those white connectors , they are numbered P4,P5,P6, and then there is a black one. I cant possibly see where they might be supposed to go.

Dunlaffin

Thanks for the help Folks, I'll take photos of the menus tomorrow. I really appreciate the time you are taking. Regards.

Dunlaffin

Hi folks , Happy Weekend !


Here is an overview of the error message / Menus i have , there are possibly others , but these seem to be the relevant ones.

Dunlaffin

and a couple more.

Schorpio

What's happening is the PC is checking each of the four boot devices in order to find something to boot (like an operating system or bootdisk etc). There is no floppy drive or hard drive connected which means it's trying to boot from your DVD drive first before then trying to boot over the network. Failing to boot from the DVD doesn't yield any on screen errors because it's generally only once in a blue moon that the user actually wants to boot from it. The three lines starting with "From Realtek...." onwards is the PC's attempt to boot from the network, but you obviously don't have a network cable plugged in and even if you did, I doubt you have that set up on your network. So that fails too and the last few lines are the PC complaining that it couldn't find anything to boot.

I remember seeing a hard drive in the earlier photos. Has that been disconnected? It would seem that it probably has. If so, reconnect it and if there is an operating system on the disk (Windows etc.) then the PC should boot!

ED E

Check these two, and the smaller ones connection to the motherboard.

Dunlaffin

Okay , both of those cables are rock solid connected , without a doubt. Smaller one is certainly properly connected at MB also.

Dunlaffin

Schorpio wrote: »

I remember seeing a hard drive in the earlier photos. Has that been disconnected? It would seem that it probably has. If so, reconnect it and if there is an operating system on the disk (Windows etc.) then the PC should boot!

To the best of my knowledge this computer went from working fine to , no image on screen it would have had windows and other programs on it. There used to be an interent connection in the office and perhaps the guy who was on this computer (gone now) dowmloaded some atrocious virus that did untold damage , and told noone, for obvious reasons , I'm purely speculating here... as I said it should be fully loaded and operational with Windows and other work-related software.

Dunlaffin

There is one thing that keeps coming to mind that may give a clue. When I first opened the PC before, I disconnected the RAM, it was not possible to turn off the computer by simply pushing the button On/off. as you can imagine in a properly functioning PC, when you push the on / off button it asks you to verify do you want to shut down, but as there was no image, I can only presume this was the scenario.
But after tinkering with the RAM it was possible to turn off the computer with a push of the button. Like the difference between, it was primarliy able to load and enter windows successfully(although I dont know , cos I couldnt see it) and now it cant boot up and reach windows at all.

So I wonder, in removing the RAM did I do some damage or wipe a critical peice of info that made the difference between being able to fully boot and now not knowing where to boot from?

number66

Have you got the HDD working? A image of that screen that lists the available drives would be useful. Also are you open to using OS's other than windows? Can you burn a CD? Do you have a pendrive that you can wipe and use?

Dunlaffin

Is this not the list of the available drives ? If it is, then it seems to be telling me that it cant see the HDD. Cant burn a CD on this PC and I am afraid I don't know what a pendrive is.

Procrastastudy

The HDD has become disconnected or is banjaxed - can you take some photos of it?

Try making sure the power and data cables are connected both ends.

Dunlaffin

Procrastastudy wrote: »

The HDD has become disconnected or is banjaxed - can you take some photos of it?

Try making sure the power and data cables are connected both ends.

I am as sure as I can be that the cables are soundly connected. If the HDD is Banjaxed then thats a bummer cos there is a couple of programs on that PC that would be particularly useful to me, Is it possible to copy the drive to another HDD? If not then would it be possible to simply save the CPU, its a Core 2 Duo and all I have in this PC is a pentium 4, maybe get a better performance. Or vice versa switch out the HDD from this to the Banjaxed PC? Is there much to gain that way.

What about the post I made above where I noticed that the PC seemed to boot to windows prior to my tinkering with the RAM, is there a clue in that ?

I can take photos of it but I'm no sure what else you will see other than whats in the first shot. Unless I take it out, will that help ?

number66

hmm, was going to suggest checking if the HDD was correctly set regarding Master/Slave/Auto , but I don't think you messed with the jumpers or removed a second drive so that's probably not it. Maybe you cracked the MB when setting the ram, did you have to use a lot of pressure on the ram when inserting it?

I think it's highly unlikely that the HDD just decided to fail now. Have a look around the BIOS for options that will get it to search for HDD's , look in advanced and set it to FULL BOOT if is doing a Quick boot.

number66

Also , try hi-light the "1 St Drive" in the image and see if you can get a list of drives up , maybe it's just turned off in the BOIS and that why it's not showing.

Procrastastudy

SATA doesnt have master/slave

If the cables are all connected I'm at a loss to know why its not showing in the BIOS... how do you know it was booting into windows before you removed the RAM?

Procrastastudy

Right that PXE thing is the machine trying to network boot - you can ignore that its for enterprise set-ups.

Trace the cables to the left of my arrow in this pic - are they connected?

Dunlaffin

Procrastastudy wrote: »

Right that PXE thing is the machine trying to network boot - you can ignore that its for enterprise set-ups.

Trace the cables to the left of my arrow in this pic - are they connected?

Cables to the left ? Thats every cable in the machine :P I'll try.

I dont know for sure that it was booting to windows but I believe it beeped once (could be wrong bit I think so) then went through a longer process of whirs and buzzes, like you would expect, then you could not turn it off simply by pressing the ON/OFF button, as is the case when you are in window, It asks you are your sure you want to shut down. As I have no visuals I am only speculating . But now after tinkering with the RAM, it doesnt beep, it makes less boot up activity and when its done you can simply turn it off by pressing the ON OFF Button

Dunlaffin

Procrastastudy wrote: »

SATA doesnt have master/slave

Sorry , have no idea what this means.

Dunlaffin

number66 wrote: »

hmm, was going to suggest checking if the HDD was correctly set regarding Master/Slave/Auto , but I don't think you messed with the jumpers or removed a second drive so that's probably not it. Maybe you cracked the MB when setting the ram, did you have to use a lot of pressure on the ram when inserting it?

I think it's highly unlikely that the HDD just decided to fail now. Have a look around the BIOS for options that will get it to search for HDD's , look in advanced and set it to FULL BOOT if is doing a Quick boot.

I did apply a modicum of pressure but I dont think I cracked anything, Can I tell my looking at it ?

I will go through all menus now thoroughly. Thanks

Procrastastudy

BDSM has been absent from PCs for sometime - the comment was more aimed at number66

Did you trace the cables?

Procrastastudy

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