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8.6

Laptop cannot boot up after 1 year idle period

Asked by sellyourmom in General Laptop

Tags: bios, hp, limit

Hi,
I am trying to revive my laptop and maybe somebody can help me here.
I have HP Pavilion N3110 notebook, which I bought in 1999, and haven't used for one year or so. All of a sudden it refuses to boot.

After I connect it to the AC/DC adapter and press the power button it gets to the HP Pavilion spash screen and then does nothing, except for some initial faint activity with the hard drive. The laptop can stay this way with the splash screen on forever. It does not even try to access the floppy.

Any bold suggestions are welcome, since I may end up just selling it for parts.

I don't know if the following is relevant, I kept it in a metal cabinet. Which I did for a couple of years prior to that as well, when I turned it on more frequently and did not seem to have any troubles.

Also, I experienced a similar problem two years ago when I tried to replace the CD-ROM (it doesn't work anymore) with a compatible model: the notebook couldn't get past the spash screen. When I installed the old CD-ROM back, the notebook got back to normal. So the CD-ROM is currently non-functional but this did not prevent the laptop from booting up before.

Another thing, I upgraded its hard drive to 9 GB, RAM to 192 MB, and OS to Win2k several years ago, and this did not cause any problems at the time. The laptop worked perfectly for a couple of years after that, until I bought a desktop, and gradually forgot about the laptop.

Here is some additional info.

I tried to boot to floppy by disconnecting the hard drive, but nothing happened, except I see the splash screen with HP logo and the system refuses to move any further.

I was able to get past the HP splash screen by pressing ESC one or two times. I even heard the fan working. But the laptop still did not try to access the floppy drive.

This is what I saw on the screen after pressing ESC once immediately after the HP logo appears:

PhoenixBIOS 4.0 Release 6.0
Copyright 1985-1998 Phoenix Technologies Ltd
All rights reserved

Build Time: 06/23/00 17:36:17
VGA BIOS ver 2.20.64D
Copyright 1997-1998 Hewlett-Packard Co.
Serial Number TW 93704015
Notebook ID: 55697519

CPU = Celeron 433 MHz
0640K System RAM passed
0191M Extended RAM passed
0128K Cache SRAM Passed
System BIOS shadowed
Video BIOS shadowed
UMB upper limit segment address: EB04
Mouse initialized
Fixed Disk0: IBM-DBCA-204860
ATAPI CD-ROM: CD-224E

Press <F2> to enter SETUP

---------------------

At this point pressing F2 does not work and the computer stays in that mode forever

If I press ESC twice and then immediately F2
then I see some or all of the above and the line:

Entering SETUP...

and then nothing happens

Normally pressing ESC twice when HP logo appears and then F2 should lead one to a selection of a boot device: floppy, hard drive or CD-ROM

Could this be a problem with the mother board or CD-ROM, maybe something else?


Thanks a lot in advance
[+][-]03/09/04 09:28 AM, ID: 10552361Expert Comment

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[+][-]03/09/04 09:43 AM, ID: 10552497Author Comment

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[+][-]03/09/04 09:59 AM, ID: 10552676Accepted Solution

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About this solution

Zone: General Laptop
Tags: bios, hp, limit
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Solution Provided By: Callandor
Participating Experts: 1
Solution Grade: A
 
[+][-]03/09/04 10:23 AM, ID: 10552909Author Comment

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[+][-]03/09/04 10:43 AM, ID: 10553106Expert Comment

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[+][-]04/03/04 07:50 AM, ID: 10747877Author Comment

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[+][-]04/03/04 11:18 AM, ID: 10748669Expert Comment

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[+][-]04/03/04 04:37 PM, ID: 10750038Author Comment

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