HP pavilion zd7000 startup troubles

[370forlife]

I got this laptop for free, it had a bad charger port. I fixed it, and it posts and everything. This laptop hasen't been running in a while, and when it started up, it froze up at the post screen. I hit the power button, and restarted it. This time it got through the post, but really slowly. It then started to start xp, but took about 15 minutes, i noticed it would barely read the hard drive.

So i restarted it, and this time it got past the post screen in about a second, and started to start xp. But it did nothing, I left it at the windows start up screen for about 20 minutes, still nothing. I noticed it again would not read the hard drive. Now i assumed the hard drive is bad. I tried booting off my Bart PE cd, but it wouldn't boot from cd, no matter what boot order i put it in.

Eventually I just removed the hard drive and then it booted from the cd. Then i put the hard drive back in and it would suddenly boot from the cd. So i used bart pe to check the hard drive, nothing. I took the cd out and rebooted it. Now it booted xp really quick and would actually read the hard drive. Problem is it still does this every once in a while. Its almost like the bios has some bug in it, or maybe the hard drive is starting to go bad?

Anyways, its a nice laptop to get for free. 2.8ghz p4 HT, 512mb ddr-333, Nvidia goforce 5600, 17" widescreen, harmon/kardon speakers, and built in wireless. When it works, its fast, luckily this laptop does no speedstepping as it uses the standard desktop 478 p4.

[gdement]

Re: HP pavilion zd7000 startup troubles

The flaky behavior sounds like it could be a bad motherboard. It probably runs hot, which would make that likely to happen.
I'd try removing the hard drive again and run some hot, stressful tests from a CD. Maybe memtest86, mprime, or load knoppix and leave it running the "chromium" game. That way you can be sure if the hard drive is relevant or not.
You could also try swapping out the memory.

[bgavin]

Re: HP pavilion zd7000 startup troubles

You need a thorough run of Memtest-86+, HWMonitor, and so forth, to get a good audit of what is going on.

Once your memory is clean, and you can see things are not over heating right away, run Prime95 to warm it up a bit. Keep HWMonitor or equivalent running so you don't smoke it. If the HSF is clogged you do not want to Prime95 the cpu into an early death.

If the HP disassembly is anything as nasty as the Toshiba, you have a real PIA on your hands getting to the clogged fans.

I won't own an HP on a bet... they have far too many chronic overheating problems. I have friends at HP who bought them on the employee discount, then returned for money back because they all die from overheating. Bad design.

[370forlife]

Re: HP pavilion zd7000 startup troubles

I already cleaned out the cpu heatsink. Its a really nice heatsink, lots of fins, copper heatpipes, 2 fans, really easy to get to. Theres a panel on the bottom that goes directly to it, remove the 4 retention screws and it pulls right out.