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I am currently enrolled in a local technical college learning computer repair.   I've been taking every computer that I can get a hold of that needs fixing and so far I've done pretty well til now.   I now have an HP Pavillion a6000n that I'm stumped on.   The computer will turn on and the fans will run.   The screen loads up to the blue HP Invent logo asking to press f1 for boot menu, f10 for setup and f11 for recovery.    If I press f1 the screen says "loading boot menu but goes no further.    Pressing f10 the screen says "loading setup" but goes no nfurther.   f11 does nothing for recovery.    After I opened the computer I was shocked to find the whole thing clogged and I mean clogged with dust!!   Every vent hole and fan was a mess with dust bunnies.    I used my vacuum cleaner on blow to clean out everything and it looks like new now.   I do have a good working power supply that I swapped but that wasn't it.    I took out the battery for a few minutes to reset the BIOS but still no go.    I don't have a CPU to swap out.  It has an AMD Athlon 64x2 processor sitting on an MZN68-LA mobo.   What else can I try?    Thank you,  Collieman5
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I'm also a PC repair tech and have been battling with the same problem for almost a month, expect it's happening for me on a much older HP Pavillion 760n (Intel Pentium 4). But the fact the fact it's HP says a lot, even before they acquired Compaq, HP has been cutting corners and making computers with mediocre parts. As a result, their machines don't last as long when compared to other brands, and I don't think that's just a coincedence.

 

HP recently got hit with some hard news:  Lower-than-expected sales for the 3rd quarter of 2009. Allowing Dell Inc. to surpass them in the US by a small margin of 0.3%. (And Acer surpassed them in Europe). It's not that big a deal, but I hope HP looks long and hard at what they're doing wrong and improves their overall quality. And until they do, I wouldn't recommend their products to you or anyone

 

But enough about that. Let's look at your problem.

 

When you hook up a pair of speakers, do you get beeps? How many beeps? Long or short?

 

My first impression is the motherboard is partly dead, especially if dust was in the CPU socket or clogging the heatsink, that all serves to suspect the motherboard. Or perhaps the CPU is fried.

 

Worst case scenario, both the CPU and the board are fried, but don't panic yet! 🙂  Let's hope that's not what happened here!

 

Have you tried swapping or reseating the RAM, for example?

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I'm also a PC repair tech and have been battling with the same problem for almost a month, expect it's happening for me on a much older HP Pavillion 760n (Intel Pentium 4). But the fact the fact it's HP says a lot, even before they acquired Compaq, HP has been cutting corners and making computers with mediocre parts. As a result, their machines don't last as long when compared to other brands, and I don't think that's just a coincedence.

 

HP recently got hit with some hard news:  Lower-than-expected sales for the 3rd quarter of 2009. Allowing Dell Inc. to surpass them in the US by a small margin of 0.3%. (And Acer surpassed them in Europe). It's not that big a deal, but I hope HP looks long and hard at what they're doing wrong and improves their overall quality. And until they do, I wouldn't recommend their products to you or anyone

 

But enough about that. Let's look at your problem.

 

When you hook up a pair of speakers, do you get beeps? How many beeps? Long or short?

 

My first impression is the motherboard is partly dead, especially if dust was in the CPU socket or clogging the heatsink, that all serves to suspect the motherboard. Or perhaps the CPU is fried.

 

Worst case scenario, both the CPU and the board are fried, but don't panic yet! 🙂  Let's hope that's not what happened here!

 

Have you tried swapping or reseating the RAM, for example?

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TechShui,    First off thank you for your reply.    I did remove the two memory modules and reseat them but no go.   I get no beeps when starting from the speakers except when I try booting with the memory modules removed.   Tried clearing the CMOS with the jumper but no go.   I called the owner of this computer about an hour ago and he told me that it would boot up then shut down after a minute or two.   Then it would shut down sooner and sooner til it would not go at all.    Sounds like it overheated.    I had a P4 machine last week that would freeze at post at every bootup.   Replaced the CPU and it's running fine now.   I'll bet it's the CPU.  
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Just another note.   I took off the fan/heatsink after letting it idle at the HP Invent blue screen for about 10 minutes and the processor was cold.   
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Sounds like a dead CPU after all, you should give yourself more credit, it seems like you figured this out by yourself. 🙂

 

That motherboard uses AM2 processors, they go on eBay for at least $60 - $70 (don't be fooled by the price gougers asking $300+). Once you add labor, your customer's looking at a hefty bill. Do you know if it's under warranty? If it is HP should fix it for free, but I wouldn't count too much on that.

 

It's hard to find AM2 cpus locally (Craigslist for example) and you risk buying a damaged cpu, unless you test it first, or get a receipt / warranty on it.

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It might be a little early to celebrate.


Yes, you did list Power supply as one of the components you've ruled out, but did you make sure to use at least a 350W power supply? An AM2 board will draw a lot of power, plus the video card is another 75W. (you might want to take that out for some of your tests)

It's unlikely that it's the PSU, but it still has to be ruled out, because it would be embarrassing to say the least, if the customer orders the CPU, only to find out it wasn't the source of the problem.

Be honest with the owner, tell him it can only be 2 things: the PSU or the CPU. If necessary, ask him to go with you to buy the PSU first, since that's the cheaper of the two. (and he can always return the PSU, if he saves the receipt).

If there's a Fry's Electronics in your city, I recommend buying the PSU there, because they have great prices on both new and refurbished hardware, and they have a 30-day return policy, no questions asked. They also carry Socket AM2 CPUs, so you can get one there if the Power supply doesn't solve the problem.

Please post back here what you find out, it will help other desktop owners with the same issue.
Message Edited by TechShui on 08-25-2009 04:08 PM
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Have you tried

 

1) reseating the memory modules.

 

2) use a bootable Linux Live CD. If the PC boots up into LINUX, then the hard drive has an issue.

 

3) disconnect the hard disk connector (IDE or SATA) and letting it attempt to boot. Hard disks can fail. That is where your recovery partition 😧 is located. Try another hard drive.  

 

As a PC repair technician, you will need to have 1) a Bootable Linux Live distribution CD 2) an Emergency Boot disk with utilities to troubleshoot issues 

 

regards,

erico 



I am a volunteer forum member. If my suggestion solved your issue, help others by marking that post as the accepted solution. Say thanks by clicking on the Yes button next to the "was this reply helpful?"



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TechShui,  The power supply was the first thing I tried.   I have a good working PSU on the self that I swapped out but didn't work.   That was in my original post.   I don't have a Fry's Electronics in my area but thanks for the heads up on that.    NewEgg is out of the CPU that I wanted so I'll do some searching tonight.
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erico,   I did try reseating the memory modules and cleaning the contacts. Both board and modules but that wasn't it.   I first tried a WinXP Sp2 CD to see if it would boot from it but it wouldn't.   I just now tried your suggestion of a bootable Linux CD ( I use PCLOS) but no go on that one either.   I don't know if the DVD drive is set to boot first as I can't get into the BIOS.   I took a good working hard drive from another machine and installed it just to see if that would work but it didn't.   I do have a emergency boot disk as my computer instructor had the class make them.  
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Collieman5,

 

Sorry for the confusion, what I was really curious about is what wattage was the PSU you used in your tests, as long as it was 350W, it probably would've booted okay, had that been the problem.

 

In this business, you can never be to careful.  :Wink:  (i.e. My HP 760n turned out to have a bad PSU)

 

Here's an AMD X2 4450e (2.3Ghz) for $53 with a 3yr warranty, from Fry's website. There's also several other CPUs on that page, most are Socket AM2, some are faster, but more expensive. You get the idea though

 

Hope that helps! :generic:

 

Edit: Once you've fixed it, don't forget to click "resolved", in your post options

Message Edited by TechShui on 08-25-2009 04:28 PM
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