[bluekiwi696]

A friend of mine wants me to fix her computer, it is an ancient machine but she claims it was running good up until lately.
It is a HP Pavilion a1623w
Running xp

The system will boot and attempt to load xp and then shows american megatrends bios info and starts to scan for the hardware configs

Tried booting into various modes, haven't tried booting from flash drive yet, not sure if comp. capable

Any ideas what the problem could be?

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Have you tried the BIOS reset trick (sort of).

Power down.
Remove power cord
Remove CMOS battery from motherboard (CR2032, about the size of a Quarter)
Press and hold the power switch for 10 seconds to completely drain all power from the computer
Reinstall CMOS battery
COnnect power cord and power up.

You should get a CMOS checksum error press F1 to enter Bios F2 to continue.
Press the key that takes you to BIOS.
If there is a key of selection to load Defaults, do that.
Set date and time.
Save changes and exit, see if it boots now.

[Ztruker]

Have you tried the BIOS reset trick (sort of).

Power down.
Remove power cord
Remove CMOS battery from motherboard (CR2032, about the size of a Quarter)
Press and hold the power switch for 10 seconds to completely drain all power from the computer
Reinstall CMOS battery
COnnect power cord and power up.

You should get a CMOS checksum error press F1 to enter Bios F2 to continue.
Press the key that takes you to BIOS.
If there is a key of selection to load Defaults, do that.
Set date and time.
Save changes and exit, see if it boots now.

[bluekiwi696]

tried the bios reset trick twice, second time holding power button longer, upon startup, screen shows american megatrends logo and bios starts scanning hardware and showing what is attached, it then goes to the "windows did not shut down properly last time" screen. I attempt to use last known good config, start normally, etc, it loads xp for a couple of seconds and goes back to american megatrends logo/scanning, cmos checksum error never came up. Any other ideas

[bluekiwi696]

am thinking component on motherboard gone bad, is it worth it to try and see what is wrong with it, system is 6 y.o., any ideas what I should start with

[Ztruker]

Okay, sounds like you are blue screening (BSOD). From the Advanced Boot Options menu you get via F8 at boot (normally), select Disable automatic restart on system failure. See4 if you get a BSOD. If so post a picture of it or write down the info. Post either here please.