This Compaq Presario 2580us Notebook PC (Product # DM758A) runs for about 1 minute from "power on" until the display shows the XP window for choosing a user, then, it clicks off, everything shuts down and goes to black screen.

HP support says that my hard drive is bad and to pay $298 by Visa and Federal Express will pick it up in the morning and return it in 5 days in working condition.

I'm having second thoughts about sending it out, tomorrow. I've built several desk top units and never had to replace a hard drive. It seems to me that if my hd was defective that I would not see anything on my display. Since Windows XP starts to boot up with normal displays, I doubt that my hard drive is the problem.

Am I right? What do you think the problem might be?

HP sells replacement hard drives for approx $400, if the part is purchased separately. Why can't I purchase lap top parts at reasonable
prices the same as I can for desk top PC's?

Thanks for your help and suggestions.

Specs:
P-4 2.3 gig; 512 Ram; 500 fsb; 40 gig 4500 rpm hard drive ; dvd/cd combo; XP... two years old and hardly used

boot from cd.... n run chkdisk or if ur compaq have any tool to check hard disk's condition...... bcoz some times, the hd is fine, but the rpm rates becomes too low to run the pc..... check the rpm, any bad sector.

Thanks, but I can't get the laptop to stay powered up long enough to run any diagnostics, or utilities.

When my daughter had it, she reports that a big warning window would appear and say: Warning! Your computer will shut down in 5 minutes! ...with a big red exclamation point.

I have never heard of such a warning with an XP operating system! This sounds like a virus to me. What do you think?

Thanks. yawni

Yes there is a virus like that years ago, but windows updates fixed that problem. However, it had i believe a 60 second countdown timer to it. The way you would fix it was to quickly change the system time to a few hours earlier which would give you enough time to get the update to patch the problem. However, it actually doesnt sould like that problem, because you dont see the count down timer. It actually sounds like it could be your processor overheating and shuting itself down due to the heat. This may have happened if the thermal paste has worn away from the heatsink attached to the processor. I seriously doubt it would be a faulty hard drive, because the symptoms sound nothing like that.