Posts by Chaky

Most likely your VGA got toasted. Those color distortions you described indicate that a connection between display and VGA was faulty (maybe even shorted) which can cause VGA to fry (remeber, VGA memory is the easiest thing to burn). Only thing missing here is POST beeping (which is not a "must be"). So, if external monitor is not getting any signal from your VGA means that VGA is not emitting any.
And, with laptops, toasted VGA means toasted motherboard means take out what you can and dich the rest.
:cry:

Don't forget to check the dimensions available for the new fan. Those heatsinks can be too big to fit in.
What I did is went to a pc shop with a lot of fans and cool(ing) stuff on display and told salesman what CPU I have. (thermaltake clone costed me ~$30..... golden orb II or something, a good choice)

Nice to hear that.

The cheapest way to build a new PC is to buy already working one.
It saves you ALOT of time and EVEN MORE psycheatric treatment bills. (Traumatic ones are optional, while others are mandatory)

The safest way to build a new PC is to buy everithing (including somebody to put it together, while you are taking an afternoon nap 60 miles away in a atomic-blast-proof underground bunker)

The dumbest way to build a new PC is to buy 5 year old parts.

The best posibble way to build a new PC is not to.

And the worst one is to spend (atleast) a week tryin' to figure out what goes where (with the leg bone connected to the knee bone...) while your'e naked and biting on the grounded wire trying to prevent ESD from frying your blood-tears-n-swet-earned-money-paid-with new bits and pieces, while you are just realizng that you need to buy an extra extesion cord (necessary to make the lenght and that 1 extra power socket you're missin') at 2 a.m. sunday (followed by 3-day national holiday)....... wait while I wipe my tears ..... and daydreaming (after a pint of coffe that kind of dreaming is the only one you'll get this week) of travelling back in time to assassinate the inventor of the transistor.

The choice is yours to make.

Thermaltake.
Costs more then most.

Settle down and be more specific, man.
How many beeps (I figure that's what you said by "pulsating"), (short, long) and wich motherboard do you have.

I got this from dell's support forum:
Memory must be EDO 144 pin Sodimms non Parity!
Look on Ebay for EDO ram and some will not fit, be careful. Make sure they say it will work for Dell, need low profile. The ones made for say Compaq are a little bit taller and you will not be able to fit two of them.

And then I found (same place):
The Latitude CPi system will support SDRAM SODIMMs with BIOS revision A03 or higher. All other versions of the CPi system (such as the CPiA, and the CPiR) support SDRAM SODIMMs. Only the Latitude CP, and the CPi with BIOS rev A02 or less did not support SDRAM.

....go figure.

You didn't mention any beeping before. (I conclude you tried 66, 100 and 133 memory and only one that worked is 66?)
The 100 and 133 memory can and should operate at 66 Mhz.
Beeps could mean that the POST memory check failed.
That could be a number of reasons (wrong timing settings, faulty memory or you just didn't put it in properly...)
In your manual should be the code table of those beeps.
Anyway, cpu bus and memory speeds are not one and the same.
In your bios setup you should be able to change memory settings. Some bios setups do not alow those changes (especially those PS with brands) or cann't change them trough bios (in that cas you'll have to mandle with jumpers).
Did Win98 install ok?

One more thing. 400 Mhz CPU clock frequency you get by multiplying BUS speed and multiplyer.
In your case bus speed is definitely 100 Mhz and multiplyer is 4.

That's normal if there is no hard disc installed.

Do you mean it has no hard disk or CD?

I think you will have to change the RAM (get 100Mhz)
This reminded me of my problems with PII 450 Mhz and RAM 133 Mhz. With that combination Win98 setup was REALLY slow and it never completed (went blue screen after first reboot). With 100Mhz ram it ran normaly.

P.S. My motherboard don't support 450 Mhz processor either, but I still have that machine and it still works like a charm.

BTW
PII 266Mhz - Bus speed=66 Mhz
PII 400Mhz - Bus speed=100 Mhz
Does your boot screen report 400 Mhz?
If not you will have to mandle with jumpers or BIOS settings to get the speed you need.
What I can tell it's same multiplier, only different bus speed.

Did your friend change CPU also? And if he did, is it same model?

That's because you have different CPU now.

You will have to reinstall the windows.
Changing CPU means that windows will no longer work, because it was set up to work with your old CPU.
If you meand by "repair disc" a setup CD, then just place your hd in your friend's laptop and format it via setup program. Put the hd back and you will be able to install windows now.

Looks to me like it's a done deal. If it is a fryed mobo then you cann't do much about it. Except salvage (probably fryed too) memory sticks and HD.
:-|

You can but we're talking about CPU that HAS A FAN INSTALLED and that fan SPINS AND STOPS.

Try replacing a battery.

read the thread
http://www.daniweb.com/techtalkforums/thread44945.html

Update to my reply:
Replace HP with Compaq.
I apologise, for my memory chip is buggy.

Did you plug in all the power cables? Are you sure about that switch? Try shorting the 2 pins the switch is plugged on. The CMOS battery should be ok, regarding it's age.

It is possible that you need 3rd party driver (so called F8 driver).
Try your manufacturers site for support.

What you're talking about is corrupted CMOS caused by almost-dead CMOS battery.
If replacing a battery did not help, try setting up BIOS, sence it had lost all the settings the moment you removed the battery. There is one crucial setting that can cause the "os not found error" placed in Standard CMOS Settings in your BIOS. It is the HD mode. Usualy you have a choice between LBA/Large/Normal/auto. You should set it to LBA. I imagine that is set on auto-detect (as system default), but the CMOS (that has been corrupted) also contains specifications of number of different hard drives. It is possible that, in your case, it sets the drive wong way. As a result, it's not working properly or at all. To solve this you will need to flash your BIOS.
To do so follow these steps:

- when booting you will notice a number on your lower left corner of the screen (during memory check). Press pause button and write it down. That number represents manufacturer of your motherboard and the model. Coded signature, so to speak.
On that same screen (above the mem. chk line) will be BIOS version (Example: Award bios 6.0pg). You'll need that too.

- find a copy of that exact cmos on the internet by the numbers you recorded earlier. (try http://www.bios-drivers.com/ or your motherboard manufacturer web site) use the first set of number to search the site. When you find it, make sure …

Similar thing happened to me (regarding the hard-drive and CD-ROM) when I (stupid me) plugged the IDE cable upside-down. Luckly for me, I didn't do any damage. My machine was acting dead just like yours ('till I plugged it right again).
Yet, you say you drove it in your car. Well, the vibrations could've benefted to the damage. My advice would be to ispect your mobo for any cracks in the solders, starting with your VGA slot.
I know, it's a long shot, but you never know...

In the old days, maybe. I had 486 that didn't require any cooling whatsoever, yet it refused to work without working fan. I know so because it was on for several days with heatsink and fan hanging on a fan's wires, far away from the chip. But todays CPUs cores melt within seconds without cooling. It's not a matter of heat as it is a matter of downscaled size of the CPUs structure. (the smaller the diameter of the wire, the less power you need to fry it)

The problems start when you launch IE?
You could try the following:
Uninstall software that was installed without prompting (from a web). Go to control panel/add or remove programs and try to figure out wich are the IE toolbars, dialers, downloaders, adware and such.
Empty the temp. internet files. To do so right-click the Internet explorer icon and click on properties (set your home page to blank while you're at it).
In middle row click on the middle button "Delete files". Then you will be prompted to empty the off-line contets too. Do. When done click on the settings button. You will see a settings window with 3 buttons. Click on the "View objects..". There will be a list of downloaded program files. Press Ctrl-A, right-click on any of them and click "remove".
If that doesn't fix it try uninstalling, reinstalling symantec utilities and scan the system for spy/ad/hijackware.
If that don't do the trick...
Friend of mine had a similar problem, only his IE would open new IE windows like crazy. He had to reinstall the system.
Anyway, if you have more than one partition on your HD and suficient space on them, you don't need to burn cds or dvds to save your work. Simply copy them on D: drive, boot from the XP Install cd, format c: and reinstall the OS. Simple as that. (right)

I must be getting old.
It's HP isn't it?
It will never boot without hard disk.
Nor give any life signs because it has no bios settins and can not do post.
I imagine that someone's laptop battery died, and that someone, in his indefinite ignorance, threw away, otherwise working, laptop and ripped it's HD in process leaving an empty shell of a laptop....

Usualy those things have some wierd shaped screws that need wierd shaped screwdriver to unscrew (say that 10 times fast).
If that's the case, you will have to go to the hardware store (not a pc-shop) and get the set of scrwedriver tips of all shapes and sizes.
Some of the screws may be covered with stickers. Some parts may be without screws whatsoever, but hooked on with those easy-to-break little plastic hooks.

And you can allways smash it open.

A dead battery could be a reason it's behaving like it is. Maybe the AC power is for recharging only and without (or dead) battery it just cann't operate.
Wuldn't be the first one.
Anyway, except for a memory stick, there isn't much to salvage. Everything is intergrated and parts that are not (CD drive, display ect.) is custom made for that model. (shape and stuff)

Unless you stumble on a exact model of sony laptop again...

The CPU has protection against overheating by observing fan's rpms.
If rpms go below certan limit some CPUs underclock them selfs to reduce heating.
If the rpms go to 0 then the bios shuts system down emidiately. So, if it ain't turnin' it ain't runnin'.

Driverguide.com

Just plug it in and turn it on.
The new HD is Serial ATA drive and it is always the master one.
Old one is IDE HD and can be set to slave (there is a jumper for that on the drive). Just don't plug the cable upside down.
Make sure that BIOS is set to auto. look for drives.
It will configure it self in this manor:
C will be primary partition of your SATA drive
D will be primary pertition of your IDE drive
E will be secondary prtition of your SATA drive etc.

Tip:

When you plug it in, remove the partitions on your IDE drive.
The reason is that your primary partition is so-called ACTIVE partition, and only way do "deactivate" it is to remove it. (System can boot only from active partition)
Wise people say that it is a bad omen to have 2 active partitions in one system.

A quick tip:
If the fan ain't turnin'
the chip ain't runnin'.

I have GeForce 7800 GT on ASUS A8N SLI and Athlon64 +3700 and i can tell you from my expiriance that to get the overheting of the CPU or VGA is very hard work. But, the temp. limit of the CPU is adjustable from BIOS, and my VGA driver is not leting me adjust it's temp. limit. It stays on 115 °C. With some serious heatsinks it just is not possible to overheat them.

Almost forgot.

One thing also can cause such behaviour.
CPU and chipset fan rpm's.
Make sure no cables are touching the blades.

Change the power supply.

Anyway, if you see something in a thrash bin, it's there for a reason.

Is there a Floppy drive?

I don't know Sony laptops very well, but I do know that HP laptops do not store BIOS settings in a FLASH ROM. Instead they use hard disc. So if that is the case then try obtaining a boot floppy disc for that particular model. And a hard disc too.

Anyway, MBO actually does work without CPU. POST part, that is.

You didn't say wich MBO You're using.
The chances are that the CPU and MBO don't work with Your current jumper settings.

Anyhow, check if there IS a beeper at all and if there is one (my MBO don't have one) maybe you didn't plug it in.

If You have beeper that is pluged in, You should proceede with theese steps:

1. Unplugg everithing but CPU, it's fan and a beeper.

2. Turn it on.

If You hear no beeps - try unplugging CPU. If You hear beeps without CPU then could be a jumper settings on MBO. Or a fried CPU.

If You hear beeps with CPU then plug in memory stick.

You should hear different beeps now.

If you hear same beeps as without memory installed then the problem is with memory stick.

If the beeps are different then POST detects that there is no VGA installed. That means that the memory passed a POST.

Now try plugging a VGA in.

If the beeps end there then it could mean that the MBO is faulty or the AGP slot is dusty.

Anyway, you should try a different MBO or a different CPU.

Sounds like a faulty MBO to me.

Your friend better dig out that piece of paper that says "warranty".

Hello ya all.
I have a BIG problem with my XP Pro SP2.
Within last 48 hours I had to reinstall XP Pro several times (5 I think).

It all started with me borrowing USB HD and trying to transfer some files on it.

First, I get the message that a high speed device is connected on non-high speed port. It turns out to be USB 2.0 HD on USB 1.1 port. OK. It'll be slow.
Then, as I was downloading some stuff from the net, comp. rebooted it self (or rather tried to) displaying a message "Corrupted or missing C:\WINDOWS\SYSTEM32\CONFIG\SYSTEM".

Tried a safe mode - same thing.

Tried all of the f8 options - same thing over and over again.

Booted from Install CD.

Tried the -r option, and got the blue screen saying "IRQL_NOT_LESS_OR_EQUAL" following "0x0000000A (0xF000E987, 0x00000002, 0x00000001, 0x807FE4ED)"

Then tried to reinstall the whole thing and, after I pressed "F8-I Agree" (on the EULA screen) I got the same blue screen again.

Only solution at that point was to install OS on USB HD:

- First I disabled IDE HD in BIOS. All went well until the first reboot.
"Disk read error" it says. (BIOS has option for booting from USB)

- Booted from CD again and went with repair option.
Had to choose wich windows to log on - one on USB HD or one on IDE HD. Later one …

You will have to get Pro SP2.

I had problems installing xp pro (first edition) on my machine (built it my self). If You're using (s/p)ata hd (in my case ASUS A8N-SLI MBO with NForce4), the setup progam cannot format it without (so-called) f6 driver for the controller. Pro SP2 (as I was told, but never tried it my self) don't have that problem sence it came out later.
Anyway,I don't see any benefit for You to go pro if Your Home Edition worked. (Unless we're talking 64)