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HP Compaq D500 Startup Problem

penneck
Aspiring Pro
Posts: 1,089
Thanks: 79
Registered: ‎03-08-2007

HP Compaq D500 Startup Problem

Those who have followed the saga of my GX270 will shudder now to read that I have been given a Compaq D500 PC which is perfectly good, but just needs a hard drive with an operating system on it. As with the GX270, I plan to move a hard disk across from an old pc, and scrap the old pc. This hard drive has another copy of XP Pro on it, and I have a Product Key for it, so it is legal.
I've never worked on a Compaq before, so I expected similar problems as with the GX270, but no. The Compaq Bios tells me it can see the hard drive, so I would have thought the hard drive had power and the data cable wired correctly. However, if I try to boot up, the pc goes through the initial POST but then does nothing.
Not only that, but now I cant get into the BIOS - it seems to start, but then comes out again straight away.
The pc does complain about the date and time stamp, so it looks like I need to get a new battery for the motherboard. Could that be the cause of the problem? Or just the first of many?
Any useful tips gratefully received
25 REPLIES 25
techguy
Grafter
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Registered: ‎12-09-2008

Re: HP Compaq D500 Startup Problem

Get the battery replaced and go from there I'd say as it will lose the config each time mains power is removed.
penneck
Aspiring Pro
Posts: 1,089
Thanks: 79
Registered: ‎03-08-2007

Re: HP Compaq D500 Startup Problem

I've now changed the battery, but am getting no further accessing the hard drive. The Bios suggests it can see the hard drive, in that it tells me size of the drive, and the boot up screen tells me a manufacturer name and model number. However, it seemed to be able to see the hard drive even when I put a twist in the ribbon cable to the daughterboard, so that may not be reliable.
The computer cannot access the data storage part of the hard drive, but if I put the drive back in the pc it had come from, and it boots up okay. I have tried setting the link on the hard drive to CS and to Master, but neither did any good. I haven't tried changing the ribbon cable, although I have tried using the ribbon cable that goes to the DVD drive. Although the boot up noticed the change (no DVD drive), that made no difference to accessing the contents of the hard drive
Could there be something in the BIOS that I need to edit to solve this problem? Has anyone any other suggestions as to what the solution might be?
Thanks
MuppetGrinder
Grafter
Posts: 151
Registered: ‎10-10-2008

Re: HP Compaq D500 Startup Problem

If you are trying to boot from the HDD then I would doubt that it would work.  the instalation is set to use the bus drivers of the board that it was installed on, and probably won't comunicate with the processor or memory in the new one, leaving you with nothing happening.  Every time you put a new Mo'bo' into a system, or move a windows OS drive to another system with a different mo'bo' in it you should, as a rule of thumb, reinstall windows.  You may get away with running a repaire instalation from the CD, but no promises. 
Boot from the XP CD nd see that happens.
penneck
Aspiring Pro
Posts: 1,089
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Registered: ‎03-08-2007

Re: HP Compaq D500 Startup Problem

Thankyou for your reply but I have only a few days earlier done something similar involving moving a hard drive from one PC to another (a Dell GX200 to a GX270). Although I had to load GX270 graphics and NIC drivers afterwards, I only had to repair XP from the XP CD. After the repair and activation, I could at least run XP. This time it is a hard drive moving from a home-built (by someone else) PC to a Compaq that my employers were dumping - nothing wrong with it, it had just been replaced by a more up-to-date PC.
I may still have to do as you suggest, and run a clean installation, but I would rather not just yet because of all the services and data that would be wiped from the hard drive. I will bide my time to see if there are any other suggestions.
Thanks all the same. I'm grateful for your help
techguy
Grafter
Posts: 2,540
Registered: ‎12-09-2008

Re: HP Compaq D500 Startup Problem

I would agree with MuppetGrinder, If the configurations differ greatly then a clean install is the best solution.
MuppetGrinder
Grafter
Posts: 151
Registered: ‎10-10-2008

Re: HP Compaq D500 Startup Problem

Pen, your example of the Dells actualy makes my point.  even though they both use a different birth of the intel chipset you still had to do a repair.  the differences in the two dell boards, at the core of it, are minnimal.  this is a totaly different kettle of fish, trust me, I been building and repairing these things for over 10 years now.  You never did let me know what happend when you boot off the CD.
penneck
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Registered: ‎03-08-2007

Re: HP Compaq D500 Startup Problem

If I boot off the XP CD, it comes up with the message "Press any key to boot from CD...." I then have a few seconds to press a key, and it will then start to run the XP CD, ie it goes into asking about repair or fresh install, etc.
If I select Repair, it goes through a longish process of loading up all the files it needs, then goes to reboot again, when I get the same message.
If I ignore the message the second time, it just sits there waiting until I have turn the pc off.
If I do press a key, it starts off from the beginning of running the XP CD.
That is as far as I get. As I wrote in my previous reply, I would rather wait a few days looking for a repair solution rather than gve up now and just do a clean installation.
Thanks for your help.
samuria
Grafter
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Registered: ‎13-04-2007

Re: HP Compaq D500 Startup Problem

In the pc the hard drive came out of what was the bios setting for the drive? If you put it backin and boot into the bios and look at the settings for the drive and write them down. Then go back to the new pc and look in its bios and try and match the settings. There will be a setting something like LBA. Large and maybe some others. If you format the disk(which you did in the first place when you installed xp) with the bios set to a certain mode and then change the mode it can mean the disk wont be seen as it maps the sectors in a different way.
If you boot from the windows cd and select recovery consul from the repair option you will get a dos prompt from that if you do
dir c:\
what do you get?
penneck
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Registered: ‎03-08-2007

Re: HP Compaq D500 Startup Problem

Hi Samuria,
I did as you suggested and returned the hard drive to the old machine. The BIOS seems to say that the drive is LBA - it had three lines of options identified as 2, 1 and 3. At the end of the line for Option 2 it had LBA, and it had (Y) next to the option number. At the end of the line for Option 1, it had Large, but there wasn't a (Y) next to the option number, nor on line 3.
Having then moved the hard drive to the new PC, I couldn't find anything like this (LBA/ Large/etc) in the BIOS.
I tried your second suggestion on the new pc, and the Repair came up with....
1. C:\Windows
Which Windows installation would you like to log onto?
I am in, what is to me, new territory here so I am, for the moment, going to do nothing until I have advice.
penneck
Aspiring Pro
Posts: 1,089
Thanks: 79
Registered: ‎03-08-2007

Re: HP Compaq D500 Startup Problem

Just in case there has been any misunderstanding from the previous message on this thread, the advice I was waiting for was from the members of this community. Please dont think I was going elsewhere for it.
Sorry
MuppetGrinder
Grafter
Posts: 151
Registered: ‎10-10-2008

Re: HP Compaq D500 Startup Problem

that's the recovery console you are in.  You could try a fixmbr from there, but I don't think that will help much.  What you want to do for the repair is, when you get to the screen that you pressed R at to go to the recovery console, press Enter to set up windows now.  The setup will then look for existing instalations of windows and, once it finds one, offer you the option to repair that instalation.  It is at this point you want to press R and then direct it to the windows install and leave it do it's thing.
samuria
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Registered: ‎13-04-2007

Re: HP Compaq D500 Startup Problem

When you boot from the cd and it asks which windows to login to choose c:\windows and use the username and password as if you were logging in normally.
then type dir c:\ and see what you get. You should get a load of files.
When it trys to boot what is the error message does it say none system disk?
While you are at the command prompt above try typing
fixmbr \Device\HardDisk0
then
fixboot c:
and finally
chkdsk c: /f
Having done all those try again if any ask are you sure just say yes.
If these dont fix then a reinstall is probably on the cards


penneck
Aspiring Pro
Posts: 1,089
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Registered: ‎03-08-2007

Re: HP Compaq D500 Startup Problem

Hi Samuria,
I tried what you suggested, and while in Repair, I was able to see loads of files on the C: drive. I then ran what you suggested including "chkdsk" (but it should have been /r not /f). I still cant get the C: drive to boot.
Someone at work suggested a process similar to yours, but instead of the chkdsk line, they said:-
copy [cd-drive]:\I386\ntldr c:\
copy [cd-drive]:\i386\ntdetect.com c:\
bootcfg /rebuild
I tried that too, but I ran into a wall when bootcfg came up with the following response:-
Add installation to boot list? (Yes/No/All):
Enter Load Identifier:
I didn't know what to do at this point, so, as I couldn't find a way to get out of this, I powered doen the pc.
Would someone please tell me what I should have done at the "Enter Load Identifier" line, because the description on the MS web-site is no guide (at least not to me)
Thanks very much
samuria
Grafter
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Registered: ‎13-04-2007

Re: HP Compaq D500 Startup Problem

I hope you havent done what they said at work as this could have killed the job. The reason being is it copies  the boot files from the cd to the drive the problem being that if your cd isnt at the same service pack level as the pc then you have got the wrong files. If your cd is original then it would be pre sp1  and your pc could be sp3. If you have done it from a slipstreamed cd then its ok
to see the  bootcfg options goto
http://www.computerhope.com/issues/ch000648.htm
We didnt get an answer as what message is displayed when you start the pc ie none system disk?