HP Pavilion help

[Shooty*]

Guys,
reinstalling XP on my dad's Pavilion dv2000. I think it's a good little machine, but it's been as slow as you like for a while, so I thought this might speed it up.

The reinstall has gone OK. Dad has been reporting a problem for a while which I didn't understand: he said that he had to "turn it on several times" to get the laptop to work.

Now I've been given the laptop to play with, I've been able to replicate it.

When I press the power botton, the "on off" light lights up, the hard drive spins a little bit (get the activity light), but I get no bios or other indication of life on the screen at all.

OK, hold power to turn off... try again.

Same thing. Or, possibly, boot normally.

If it DOES boot, there's no "we failed to boot properly last time, would you like safe mode" prompt or anything, indicating to me that th emachine is unaware that it was having a problem.

Any thoughts?

(p.s. I'm going to tell him to get a macbook, i think, but I might keep this as a play rig for myself or something).

[MSIC]

Sounds like a PSU / motherboard issue, although it would be a wild stab in the dark to guess what. (sorry, i know that isnt helpful).
Is it running the latest BIOS?

[Shooty*]

Probably not. I'm not a great one for bios flashing, i have to say. perhaps I should learn.

Oddly, each 3rd boot seems to be the magic one.

Fail
Fail
Boot

Fail
Fail
Boot.

[filbert]

sounds like the gpu's gone or going, common failure on hp, google dv2000 boot failure.

[vti_786]

as filbert says.

the rotten gpu fault.

basically the nvidia gpu have had common overheating issues, you could try to contact hp and see if they would do a replacement on the motherboard for free, it is a recognised issue.

the design on the hp are also very bad, they used a heatpad to connect the heatsink with the gpu, in time this will shrink and the contact between the gpu and heatsink is very minimal, hence causing and overheat,on my dv6000 i have put a copper shim inbetween the heatsink and gpu to make a good contact, it has dropped the temps by 15-20%.

if you need anymore advice please don't hesitate to pm me

[nimbu]

Also if it has a Nvidia 8 series GPU could be the generic problem overheat problem with that. Had lots of fun with my XPS 1330 and that issue......

[vti_786]

Also if it has a Nvidia 8 series GPU could be the generic problem overheat problem with that. Had lots of fun with my XPS 1330 and that issue......

i don't think it's just the 8 series nvidia chipsets, they have had issues with others also, mine is the 7 series and had it done by HP

[Shooty*]

Hmmmmmm.... OK, peeps, thank you. It does run hot, for sure, and I can't figure out how to get the cover off.

But it doesn't crash once it's booted. It's stable once it's up and running. I'll google.

[Shooty*]

No joy on Bios update.


...

Does anyone know a memory tester that operates within windows? I can't seem to get anything to work from bootable CD/ USB. It ignores all disks except the hard drive. I've altered the bios, but each time I get an abortive start up (i..e the original problem), the bios seems to default to previous settings.