Hello all,

I just joined the NT Compatable site and I would like to say everything has been great thus far.

I have a challange that I can not get past.

About 2 weeks ago a friend came to me with his "HP Pavilion 533c" desktop PC
(! IT SAYS Pavilion 500 on the back of the PC but, 533c on the cage that holds the HDD's and FDD !)

( PLEASE NOTE - I am in the middle of an XP Pro install )

The PC WILL:
- power up
- pass the P.O.S.T
- show the HP logo
- then the Windows XP Splash Screen
- it will then resume the install
BUT!!!!!
- it WILL do 1 of 2 things:
+ restart over and over. It will stop this madness ONLY if I
kill the power.
+ if the XP install CD is not in the drive:
++ the monitor goes black.
++ the CPU fan dies.
++ the rear case fan dies.
++ the CDrRW drive looses power.
--++ the Power Supply still has power.
--++ the DVD drive still has power.
--++ the HDD sounds as if it still has power.
Pretty much all fans less the "Power Supply" fan die, the monitor
goes black, the green light on the front of the monitor turns Amber,
the CDrRW drive dies but, the DVD drive still works, HDD is still on,
LED's are still on, and the PC is 100% unresponsive.

It use to have XP home on it. When it still had XP Home on it, it would
boot up to the desktop ONLY in safe mode. Even if it did it make it
to the desktop it wouldn't stay on real long.

I CAN HOW EVER - Boot up the PC and run for as long as I like from
a Live Linux CD(i.e. knoppix, Mandrake Move, Feather Linux). The
PC has not yet had any problems running from any of the Live Distros.

Right now all it will do is power up, try's to resume the install
and dies. I have also tried this with the original XP Home CD's
it does the same thing.

I really need some help on this, I have changed pretty much everything I could to trouble shoot this PC, memory, power supply,
video card, BIOS defaults, HDD's, allmost everything I could.
Thanks in advance to anyone with any advice/help/tips.
Richard-

RAM. Without RAM, XP won't run. How much RAM in that HP, 32meg? Heh heh heh, I'm surprised it even posted with Home on it.

Slap 2000 on it, it should be okay, and that's 1000 times better than '98SE.

I appritiate you taking a look at my post.

I am not sure what you ment? it kinda sounded like
you were trying to make fun of the PC I am working on?

I would like you to know it's a P4 that runs 512DDR.

I really don't think that it is/was the OS. Again, thanks
for reading the post but, please keep mean slated comments
to comment/review style forums. Thnaks.
Richard.

Sorry dude, I did not check the HP model # before posting, my mistake, my apologies. I wasn't trying to be mean at all, my wife is running XP on a 533 Celeron, so I know all about the probs associated with slow processors and XP. Obviously, you don't have a slow processor.

I take it the case hase never been off the tower? It could be a heat issue, if the inside of the case, including the heatsink, are full of dust, it's overheating the CPU. Pop the case off the tower and have a look at how dusty it is.

I imagine there's a way to get into HP's BIOS, if you can get in there on boot up, have a look at the temps, which should be under "system health" or something similar, let us know what temp the CPU is running at.

Once again, my apologies, I'm not here to make fun of anyone, I was just lazy and didn't check out what processor that system was running. My mistake.