HP tower 1.2 Ghz 192MB Ram 20gig hard drive Got it today and can't get it to boot Shows the HP logo screen then goes to a blank screen with a flashing cursor in the top left. I don't know what to do and need to get this rig going. Please help
open the cabint and remove the RAM and Hard drive cable and boot the PC and let me know what you see... normally the problem caused by bad RAM or HDD... its not possible to say anything from here unless i can physically examin the PC...
Is that a new rig? Most new PCs with flashing cursor on the top left have no OS installed yet. Some instances it also shows weird characters.
hard drives works good in my other computer. All cables, etc are firmly seated. Both RAM sticks work great in my other computer It's a hp pavillion 501n
I'd see if it will boot off a Linux live CD, if it does, it's probably not the computer, it's the HDD, probably corrupted somewhere in the OS.
The hard drive might be healthy, but have you scanned it for viruses? have you tried re-installing the OS on it? doing a repair/recovery on it?
I installed a fresh copy of XP onto it 3 days ago. I am using that hard drive and memory right now in this pc(just switched it over to this one)
can you hear beeps as soon as you turn on? depending on your bios and what beeps you hear, you might be able to find the problem
Try a bios reset on the motherboard, they usually have a reset jumper on there somewhere (usually near the battery, but not always), usually labelled BIOS RST or CMOS RST
Is there an OS on it? Try looking in the BIOS settings or simple reinstall windows from the restore cds you might have got
you said you installed XP correct? didnt XP req needs higher ram and CPU? probably your comp's overloaded
had a buddy look at it and he said he thinks it's either the motherboard or the processor What do you think?