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- HP Community
- Notebooks
- Notebook Operating System and Recovery
- old hp pro 4530 series laptop

Create an account on the HP Community to personalize your profile and ask a question
10-20-2018 08:35 PM
The laptop has been very slow for years. Anyway, tonight, I plugged in an usb device which I later learnt was only XP compatible, not even Vista compatible. And when I plugged it into the laptop, it crashed it while trying to detect the old usb device (which I didn't realise was so old)
So I hold power key to force shut down. then I press power key again to boot. I select "start windows normally". but windows no longer starts, after long time, it goes to a blue screen but it's like the top left corner of what a normal login screen would be in lower res. cannot type or login, does not respond to any commands.
so I press power key again to force shut down. It asks me if I would like to start windows start up repair. I click yes. It does it's windows repair thing but the screen is just grey.
So I press power key again to force shut down, now I click "start windows normally", but now it blue screens and goes back to asking whether to start windows start up repair.
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is there any way to fix this? I know this laptop is like 10 years old but it has some legacy stuff on and it's the only laptop I have.
I would rather not have to go to the trouble of manually pullling out the HDD to recover the data on it.
10-21-2018 09:20 AM - edited 10-21-2018 09:21 AM
Hello @maga2016
Welcome to the HP Support forum.
What Windows version you use - Windows Vista or 7 ?
What is your HP computer model and specifically the product number (p/n) - here is how to find the information >> http://support.hp.com/us-en/document/c00033108
If Windows 7, do you have a COA sticke
Perform some basic hardware checks to rule out hardware problem
- Please, shutdown the computer using the power button (pressed and hold for a few seconds until PC powers off)
- Power the computer back on.
As soon as you press the power-on button, immediately begin hitting the Esc button (like tap-tap-tap) before any logo appears. This should open a HP Startup Menu
- Choose F2 to open System Diagnostics. Follow the on-screen instructions to perform System Test >> Quick test.
This will check major hardware componets for issue (do it just in case) . Here is more info >> http://support.hp.com/us-en/document/c03467259#AbT1
If there are no system checks/no quick tests, perform HDD (hard disk drive) and RAM check (memory check).
Let me know the test results.
*** HP employee *** I express personal opinion only *** Joined the Community in 2013