Hi,

I am trying to figure out what is wrong with my buddies PC and I am stumped.
it is an old HP Pavillion 500.

The thing powers on but there is no video on the screen and I hear nothing
coming from the h/d after the initial boot, which lasts about a second.
AFter that nothing...no repsonse.  The monitor just goes into countodown
mode for the auto power saver. Monitor is fine.  I tested it on my PC. (The
mobo has onboard video)  I also cannot restart the PC with the button in the
front.  It does nothing.  Everything is powered up though.

He was using this before but had no virus protection whatsoever.  All he had
was the internet.

Could it be:

Mobo onboard video is fried?

Mobo is messed up?

bad hard-drive.

Major virus?  If this is so, how di I get out of this?

thanks..any help is appreciated.

On Thu, 17 Feb 2005 21:08:04 -0500, "Bacchus"
<kdoye2***@hotmail.com> wrote:

What's an HP Pavillion 500, like, exactly?  We could go look
it up but that's a lot of work when you already know.

Show quoteHide quoteUnlikely, the problem you're seeing is the all-encompassing
failure-to-POST, which can be video but seldom is.

Possible.  Take voltage reading of the battery and/or try
another battery.  Try clearing CMOS.  Examine motherboard
for failed capacitors.

They don't generally fail in a way that would cause this,
but simply unplugging it from board and power supply would
rule this out... system doesn't need a drive to POST (put
video onscreen).

Extremely unlikely to be a virus.  Not impossible but
relatively unheard of.


If you can take voltage readings of the power supply with a
multimeter, do that too.  If all above fails, start
stripping the system down, removing all non-essential
components but CPU, heatsink/fan (make sure fan(s) still
work), 1 memory module (or 2 for later RDRAM) & the onboard
video (or supply a video card if you have a spare but it's
far less likely to be onboard video that failed even
compared to a video card).  You don't need keyboard, mouse,
drives, etc... you could even unplug the from panel LED and
switch wiring just in case the (case) buttons are
failed/stuck or a frayed wire is shorting.

Ultimately if that doesn't work you  can take the power
supply motherboard, and aforementioned minimal components
out and try then on a (non-metal) desk, NOT on an
anti-static plastic bag.  You might also unplug power supply
from AC for a few minutes and examine it internally.  On a
younger system the odds (barring any other evidence) would
be the power supply is failing, but at this age (presuming
it's old, we still don't know (?) there are a lot of things,
perhaps just a bad connection (try reseating cards and
memory, other connectors).

Show quote Hide quote ive had similar problems, taking out the CPU and re seating it helped and as
many people have told me here a can of compressed air, simple that it is can
clean off the dust and make things nice again

and cleaning CPU, new thermal compound etc, a basic MOT style servicing

fixed this prob for me whenever i had it

last time for me simply taking out the processor and then re seating it
worked

simple huh

try it

HTH

christo

Show quote Hide quote You can verify if it's the hard drive or a virus by clearing
the CMOS and detaching the HDD cables; the onboard
video by installing an AGP card (if it has an AGP slot)
or a cheap old PCI graphics card.

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