Pentium 4 computer won't boot past BIOS

This may be in the wrong group, but I can't figure out what would be
better.

I just got a used Pentium 4 PC for my father, which I was told worked
(it was free). On getting it home, it would boot (quickly) to a weird
screen with extended ASCII characters in who-knows-what codepage and
various colors, and I was unable to get into the BIOS setup! It was
supposed to have Windows XP on it. Slightly baffled at its inability
to even bring up the BIOS setup screen, I removed the battery.
Restoration of battery and power presented nearly the same problem,
but the HP logo came up (expected - it's an HP) and no psycho screen
display. The one thing which I had to change before turning it on was
the PSU - it was too big and the CD drives wouldn't fit in, so I took
a spare one and replaced it with that. The replacement PSU was 400W as
opposed to 250W, so that should be fine (or am I grossly wrong?).

On Apr 18, 3:16*pm, gfretw...@aol.com wrote:
> On Sat, 18 Apr 2009 12:01:39 -0700 (PDT), gabjs...@gmail.com wrote:
> >This may be in the wrong group, but I can't figure out what would be
> >better.
>
> >I just got a used Pentium 4 PC for my father, which I was told worked
> >(it was free). On getting it home, it would boot (quickly) to a weird
> >screen with extended ASCII characters in who-knows-what codepage and
> >various colors, and I was unable to get into the BIOS setup! It was
> >supposed to have Windows XP on it. Slightly baffled at its inability
> >to even bring up the BIOS setup screen, I removed the battery.
> >Restoration of battery and power presented nearly the same problem,
> >but the HP logo came up (expected - it's an HP) and no psycho screen
> >display. The one thing which I had to change before turning it on was
> >the PSU - it was too big and the CD drives wouldn't fit in, so I took
> >a spare one and replaced it with that. The replacement PSU was 400W as
> >opposed to 250W, so that should be fine (or am I grossly wrong?).
>
> Did you replace the battery yet?
> I have seen strange boot problems caused by a bad battery. I suspect
> the BIOS is being corrupted between the reset and the load by a
> marginal voltage.

That makes plenty of sense and has no effect. Any more ideas? (Please
don't take that in a bad way.)

In news:cb2c9cc2-5680-460a-838c-
wrote:

> I just got a used Pentium 4 PC for my father, which I was told worked

Hi, (for or from?) Your father should know the surroundings. Suggest for.

> (it was free). On getting it home, it would boot (quickly) to a weird
> screen with extended ASCII characters in who-knows-what codepage and
> various colors, and I was unable to get into the BIOS setup! It was

OK, STOP. You would have to find the sequence to get into BIOS.
What brand - what motherboard?

First set up Your display to basic 600x400 pixels and try again.
The shown display may be brand specific (HP as later stated).

> supposed to have Windows XP on it. Slightly baffled at its inability
> to even bring up the BIOS setup screen, I removed the battery.

NO, a battery problem would have caused other error messages/displays.
And at 600x400 pixels there should be no problem to show a BIOS screen.

> Restoration of battery and power presented nearly the same problem,
> but the HP logo came up (expected - it's an HP) and no psycho screen

Oh yes, that's great! Then look on HP pages for the BIOS activation entry.

> display. The one thing which I had to change before turning it on was
> the PSU - it was too big and the CD drives wouldn't fit in, so I took
> a spare one and replaced it with that. The replacement PSU was 400W as
> opposed to 250W, so that should be fine (or am I grossly wrong?).

So You now have a 250W PSU? Should not cause any problem.
On the other hand why not try without a fitted CD drive?

This PC now boots up to a HP logo and presents then *WHAT error message*?
If You find out what motherboard, then the BIOS setup entry should be known.

You may also try to put the installed HD into another PC and check it there
for functionability.

Does the HD spin and also the fan(s)?
If the HD is accessed the You should see an appropriate error message
(if the supposed Win-XP cannot be started). Like no system disk...

As You see the HP logo - there is a good chance to get further.
May be the BIOS is setup to boot from another device (like a net disk)?

So, check the HD in another PC to be operational (what file-system?).
Identify BIOS setup entry key strokes - set BOOT to "from" HD disk.
Horst

Horst Franke schrieb:

> As You see the HP logo - there is a good chance to get further.
> May be the BIOS is setup to boot from another device (like a net disk)?

I have a similar problem, since I first had to replace the graphics card
on a machine, and after that worked[1], also tried an upgrade of SuSE
10.3 to 11.1. From that time on the Intel logo appeared after booting,
but nothing else. After half an hour, while I was speaking to my
"personal hotline", the BIOS screen happened to appear. Since that time
the machine boots as before, but I cannot use any installation CD any
more. All the Windows (XP) setup disks hang on "Setup is inspecting your
hardware". A BIOS reset to factory or optimized defaults doesn't help :-(

[1] The installed XP systems were very picky about the exchanged
graphics card. The first system I could make work was a W2k, which had
no problems with that change at all. One XP installation worked after a
couple of tries, in /SOS mode, the other one also required about half an
hour to boot again, regardless of "safe mode" or other boot options.

Can somebody explain what happens in that long time, when the BIOS or XP
does nothing but show an (almost) blank screen?

DoDi

In news: Hans-Peter Diettrich wrote:

> I have a similar problem, since I first had to replace the graphics
> card on a machine, and after that worked[1], also tried an upgrade of
> SuSE
> 10.3 to 11.1. From that time on the Intel logo appeared after booting,
> but nothing else. After half an hour, while I was speaking to my
> "personal hotline", the BIOS screen happened to appear. Since that
> time the machine boots as before, but I cannot use any installation
> CD any more. All the Windows (XP) setup disks hang on "Setup is
> inspecting your hardware". A BIOS reset to factory or optimized
> defaults doesn't help :-(
>
> [1] The installed XP systems were very picky about the exchanged
> graphics card. The first system I could make work was a W2k, which had
> no problems with that change at all. One XP installation worked after
> a couple of tries, in /SOS mode, the other one also required about
> half an hour to boot again, regardless of "safe mode" or other boot
> options.
>
> Can somebody explain what happens in that long time, when the BIOS or
> XP does nothing but show an (almost) blank screen?

Hi DoDi
the Intel Logo after booting is a setup of the BIOS.
But I cannot understand why a _BIOS screen_ was then displayed.
Looks like as if no BOOT device was found.

If a WinXP CD hangs on "Inspecting your hardware" then it looks to me
like checking if the WinXP CD belongs to your current hardware/PC.

A changed graphics card should not cause any severe problem except
for asking Microsoft for a new activation key.
I don't know if this requires a new ProductKey.
But a new activation cycle may be required.

As far as I know a W2K does not require this cycle.
But this also used a different Win2K installation CD.

A Win XP CD performs the checkup of your hardware to test if
this CD is still related to the original hardware it was sold with.
Horst

Horst Franke schrieb:

> the Intel Logo after booting is a setup of the BIOS.

Right. On another machine I encounter problems with the even the logo
display. Sometimes it helps to turn the monitor off and on again, but
not always. Only later, when the booted OS takes control, the graphics
card is initialized compatible with my monitor.

> But I cannot understand why a _BIOS screen_ was then displayed.
> Looks like as if no BOOT device was found.

This happened because I tried several keys, in order to get visual
feedback from the machine.

> If a WinXP CD hangs on "Inspecting your hardware" then it looks to me
> like checking if the WinXP CD belongs to your current hardware/PC.

Then a progess indication (dots) should become visible after the text,
and finally at least an error message.


> A changed graphics card should not cause any severe problem except
> for asking Microsoft for a new activation key.

This seems not to apply in my case. None of the previously installed XP
systems asked for re-activation, when they happened to come up at all.


> As far as I know a W2K does not require this cycle.

Right. This makes the activation a possible trouble source with newer
Windows versions.

> A Win XP CD performs the checkup of your hardware to test if
> this CD is still related to the original hardware it was sold with.

I had no problems when booting the CDs on a very different (64 bit)
machine. One CD is a Dell OEM version, that never complained about a
non-Dell machine.

The setup programs also displayed the progress dots after "inspecting",
until I had to replace the graphics card. I still wonder what's
happening when the installation hangs without any feedback, and when a
previously installed system hangs for half an hour, also without any
feedback. If it were only a graphics card problem, a system still should
react on CTRL-ALT-DEL, or on the sleep button.

Also: when I restored one of my XP installations from a backup, taken
before the replacement of the graphics card, that installation happend
to boot immediately. Of course I had to update the display driver, to
get out of VGA mode, but until then the system was working as expected.

One reason might be: a Windows update (not part of the backup) prevented
the installed system from working with the replaced graphics card.

But this still doesn't explain why the installation CDs fail to proceed
on that machine.

DoDi