Pavilion Media Center m8200n black screen and freezing

[Wheelman01940]

Any opinions on using Staples Tech Services to try to isolate and address the issues we are seeing with the M8200N?   Thru Turkey day they have a 50% off services sale .... yes, some of us are technical enough to know we've hit our limits on what we can do or the time we are willing to waste on this ... ALSO, might the scrap heap be the best route given the sales on similar machines today?   Hate to throw good $$ out after bad.  I had a Dell that was like this ... it was simply a Lemon is all respects .. even Dell could not fix it .. which is why I now have HP's.  Who would be the next manufacturer ...?

Thanks and, BTW, what a PITA this machine has become!!!!  :-(

[amooolya]

this is a message for hp team, your postings on the ocr helped me. Thanks. But i found very difficult to reach out to you.

[surfdawg1]

I have a lightly used m8200n, pushing 3 years old now.  Mine powered up, but just got a black screen and a note on the monitor saying there was no video source coming in. I believe that the place where the monitor attaches to the motherboard is screwed up because it is wiggly loose. Not a very good design. So I bought a new video card and installed it, but the computer shut down pretty fast and would not power back up. I uninstalled the card, and have to plug it in to power up and shut down, the power button no longer works. With all the sales going on right now, it's probablya better idea to get a new one than to try and fix this boat anchor. Dust was never an issue.

[eoran]

I am confronting this problem also, but my machine is a hp pavilion a6200n.  That pc freezes and crashes all the times.  I just don't know what's wrong.  I performed a memory test, which did not reveal any memory problem.  I just can't see what it is.  I would appreciate it if someone could help.

[dubble6s]

PKRAVETS you got it 100% right.  I have and love this M8200N and it is a dust collector.  I was having all of the same issues described here; black screen, won't boot up, BSOD, IRQL_NOT_LESS_THAN_OR_EQUAL_TO, BAD_HEADER_PANEL, would run for a while then quit ... all of them.  I should have taken the original "hint" the machine gave me with the short tone followed by the long tone; which when looked up comes up as a heat issue.

I took out my TV tuner card, CPU and all four memory sticks.  I used canned air to blow out all the fans and slots plus everything else and then separated the fan from the CPU.  I couldn't believe what I saw when I did that.  Dust was literally CAKED on the heat sink.  I bought my machine in 2007 and never have done a thorough cleaning.  I have had the side panel off and blown out what I could see in the past.  I used 3 cans of canned air to do the job right this time.

I reassembled everything and the machine literally fired right up and has not stopped running since.  I went out and bought WIndows 7 Ultimate and it runs perfectly on this 32-bit machine.  I did not do a single hardware upgrade.  I really wanted to tax this machine when I was done.  I started a virus scan, played a video, opened MS Office and sent some emails, all at the same time.  The machine did not even blink and ran everything smoothly.

PLEASE, PLEASE before you run out and buy a power supply, video card, memory or whatever you're thinking will fix it, do a THOROUGH cleaning of your machine first.  If you don't have a legitimate hardware issue, your machine will run like brand new again!  I know I can get a few more years out of it now just by doing what I did!

Thanks and good luck all,

Rich

dubble6s

[thevictor1]

Ho:

Good infromation, but if this is true, why would my HP m8200 run in safe mode, but lock up under normal Windows Vista?   Does safe mode use less power?