BIOS screen will not come up when starting a HP Pavilion 524g

[Bighunk]

Good morning all,

Yesterday morning my sister dropped off their home pc, which they acquired not long ago, it's a HP Pavilion 524g 2.2GHz 40GB hard drive w/ 64MB of RAM, generally used for internet browsing & the girls' schoolwork.
It seems during a recent visit from my sister's family-in-law, her teenage nephews opened up the box trying to make it work with some game they wanted to play. Obviously this was done without any authorization, and to my understanding the boys got in serious trouble, but those details are best for another forum..
Long story short - sister brought the victim machine to me to check it out. spent all day yesterday and have been at it for a couple of hours today already, but the problem I encounter is when switching the power on, the monitor displays "Video not detected" No beeps, & no BIOS screen.
I have looked practically every single place where I thought i'd at least get an idea of what the matter is, and though my knowledge about computers has grown considerably by breaking & putting back together my own pc, when it came to this, I'm having quite the day trying to get the pretty-yet-useles machine sitting right next to me.
looked up all the manufacturers online, but for one reason or the next, none of those pages cover things like BIOS resetting procedures, and/or things which could lead me a step closer to the correct recovery of their home machine.

I appreciate any help pointer or suggestion if it exists....

Bigskunk

[Bighunk]

PC in question has 256MB of DDRAM and not 64MB as I wrote in the original post, the 64MB DDRAM is the shared video memory.
Also forgot to mention it has the WinXPHome OS, and is a 2.2GHz Pentium 4... Was in a hurry to go run an errand, my apologies...

[Mark]

my older HP machine needs to press f-1 i think to get to the bios, not sure if that is what you where asking for.

[ghettoside]

check if the RAM chips are seated properly. If the RAM's not in you won't get any screen, and the sys won't start, you'll hear it start 'ticking off', but then it'll stop.
Unclear exactly what's happening when you boot up.

remove battery. unplug comp. let sit a few minutes. plug in & power on. will reset sys options in bios and should give you error stop during boot up and will tell you what key to get to cmos. power off, reinstall battery. then you should be able to access cmos.

[aagiants]

Your best bet, if possible, is find the motherboard of the HP. Then get a manual to it..

Try to contact the kids who messed with it

Maybe they removed a jumper or somthing

[Bighunk]

Originally posted by the snake
my older HP machine needs to press f-1 i think to get to the bios, not sure if that is what you where asking for.

Thanks, and - I tried that, but nothing.. also tried pressing the Insert key when starting it up - nada. About all it does is start up, but nothing but a black monitor. My sister says when it was hooked up at her home to their flatscreen, it displayed "Video not detected" - but for transport convenience she only brought the pc & I have it hooked up to my older small monitor(no "Video not detected" or anything else for that matter right now).

As I mentioned earlier, there are SO many things I am still clueless about, like usb flash (whut'z dat fo?), so I have a feeling i'm overlooking something that could be an obvious solution this whole thing...

[ghettoside]

check the RAM!

[The Dude]

First thing I would try is to clear the CMOS, to reset the BIOS to factory defaults There is usually a jumper to do this "with the power off". Removing the battery for 5 or more minutes will do the same thing. If you are lucky you will be able to get into the BIOS. As suggested I would also reseat the ram and also remove and reseat all your PC cards, especially the video card. The video BIOS splash screen should be the first thing that comes up followed by the PC BIOS splash screen. Does it try to power up at all, any fans running?

[ghettoside]

check the RAM first!

[Bighunk]

[i]

As I mentioned earlier, there are SO many things I am still clueless about, like usb flash (whut'z dat fo?), [/B]

ugh... did it again... lol I meant to say BIOS flash... *blush*

Anyway, i'll try what ghettoside suggests & cross my fingers.

And, I spent half of yesterday looking for the manual to the ASUS
P4GS33-LA motherboard, only to find similar but not exact models of it... Looked for info in the HP site too, no info about anything there either...

Bigskunk

[Mark]

what is the model number of the machine ?

[extreme]

Same thing happend to me when i was working on a friends old HP. What i did was Clean out all the dust, Took out the processor, Cleared CMOS, Reseated RAM, Checked all the Power connectors. After i did all that it booted right up. Try doing some of that maybe it will work

Goodluck

Extreme

[Bighunk]

Originally posted by The Dude
First thing I would try is to clear the CMOS, to reset the BIOS to factory defaults There is usually a jumper to do this "with the power off". Removing the battery for 5 or more minutes will do the same thing. If you are lucky you will be able to get into the BIOS. As suggested I would also reseat the ram and also remove and reseat all your PC cards, especially the video card. The video BIOS splash screen should be the first thing that comes up followed by the PC BIOS splash screen. Does it try to power up at all, any fans running?

Hey guys, here's what I did:

Disconnected all the cables, power supply, RAM, modem card(the only card inside other than the big mama one), battery;
I let it sit like that for over 30 mins., slapped everything back in, plugged it up and fired her up. Nada - thing is still as smart as an Osterizer... The fans are running, and it sounds like something else other than the fans is doing something(hd?), but monitor is all black, no options, instructions, warnings or salutations.

The pc looks pretty much new, I mean there is absolutely no dust inside, I also took three snapshots of it, I uploaded them to my aol homepage: (http://hometown.aol.com/bighunk/link.html )

In one of those shots I indicate the only pins which look like they could be the ones in charge of resetting the CMOS, I mean i've done that procedure on my past & my present pc, and there's nothing like those on this pc...

In response to the snake, it's a HP Pavilion 524g (let me know if that's the model # you asked for or not if you can)

Would it be possible for something serious to be wrong with it? Thanks again for your time everyone :)

Bigskunk

[YARDofSTUF]

by taking the battery out u did reset the CMOS. now the kids could have broke something, scratched the mobo, pulled a jumper off that sets teh video to onboard or many other things. this mobo is made for hp so theres no online guides or anything which makes it even harder to figure out.


good luck!

[Mark]

here is the web page for that machine, couldn't really find much.

http://h20015.www2.hp.com/en/product.jhtml?reg=&cc=&lc=en&pagetype=hppavilion296670

[The Dude]

Like YARDofSTUF said the kids gould have done anything. I'm no expert but I would double check all the cables and plugs coming from the power supply. My first suspect would be the video card, since the video bios loads first. If you can find another card to try I would do that. If it's onboard video I would be thinking a jumper got switched to disable it. I think it may be time to grill the kids for answers.

[Bighunk]

Originally posted by The Dude
Like YARDofSTUF said the kids gould have done anything. I'm no expert but I would double check all the cables and plugs coming from the power supply. My first suspect would be the video card, since the video bios loads first. If you can find another card to try I would do that. If it's onboard video I would be thinking a jumper got switched to disable it. I think it may be time to grill the kids for answers.

:rolleyes:
yeah, I just got off the phone with my sister - told her the guys @ speedguide's forums said to broil the boys in the ol' hot chair...

to make sure, I did double check all the connections, and at least to my level of experience, I'd say everything looks pretty much like the way it should be, I mean, there's really not a whole lot in there that could go wrong as far as loose connections, & the few components, jacks & wires it does have, look ok to me - even has that sweet brand-new appliance smell to it. so i'm guessing the problem isn't as simple as I thought it'd be. should've just told 'sis to give 'em the gas chamber... I know I certainly would've...

as far as snake's reply, yup - absolutely ~nothing~ useful can be found at the manufacturer's site. this experience has made me learn to never ever EVER even toy with the idea of getting a setup such as this one - I have always had the curiosity of just what buying a ready-to-fire-up 'puter was like... headaches.

thanks again guys, I'm sure i'll be visiting this forum more frequently from now on, already have a list of useful looking bits & pieces to try out on my own pc that I found on these forums... :)

-Bigskunk

...but first, where's my advil :o

[Mehmet]

I was going to suggest reseating the vid card, only to find out there isnt one thats on an AGP slot..

Does the harddrive spin? when you turn it on, can you hear the harddisk spinning up? it should go.. *quiet*rrrrrrrRRRRRRR*louder*

[Bighunk]

Originally posted by Mehmet
I was going to suggest reseating the vid card, only to find out there isnt one thats on an AGP slot..

Does the harddrive spin? when you turn it on, can you hear the harddisk spinning up? it should go.. *quiet*rrrrrrrRRRRRRR*louder*

Ya know what, I doubt the hard disk is in fact spinning, I mean I just powered it on, and put my ear as close as possible to it, and the noise I heard(besides from the *wheeiiifffffffff* coming from the fans), was more like a *quiet*rrgh*quiet*... again, I never had the chance to actually see it when it was working, so I don't know what noise & how noisy the harddisk on it might be, but by the sound of things, it attempts to start spinning & then stops right away... does that make sense?

:confused:

[Mehmet]

hrm.. if thats the case, there might be a short under the mobo, a cable stuck under it or something, that happened with my mobo a little while ago.

[Bighunk]

Originally posted by Mehmet
hrm.. if thats the case, there might be a short under the mobo, a cable stuck under it or something, that happened with my mobo a little while ago.

Hey Mehmet, thanks for the tip, turns out there was in fact a screw caught between the motherboard & the floor of the box... now, correct me if i'm wrong, but isn't that real bad ? :( What I mean is, i've heard that a short like that can fry up the motherboard, but I may be wrong.

Anyhow, after carefully removing the screw (which turned out to be the one missing from the side cover..), I tried to start it up, and unfortunately, the Pavilion is still a vegetable :rolleyes:

Bigskunk

[BaLa]

Originally posted by Bighunk
Hey Mehmet, thanks for the tip, turns out there was in fact a screw caught between the motherboard & the floor of the box... now, correct me if i'm wrong, but isn't that real bad ? :( What I mean is, i've heard that a short like that can fry up the motherboard, but I may be wrong.

Anyhow, after carefully removing the screw (which turned out to be the one missing from the side cover..), I tried to start it up, and unfortunately, the Pavilion is still a vegetable :rolleyes:

Bigskunk
if that's the case there's a possibilty the mobo is or got fried..

but you did say the fans and stuffs turn on..so hard to tell...

[Bighunk]

Originally posted by BaLa
if that's the case there's a possibilty the mobo is or got fried..

but you did say the fans and stuffs turn on..so hard to tell...


okay... therefore that would

mean that ??

'cmon guys I really need good advice here :(

[Mehmet]

actually guys.. power can still go through your mobo during a short, just that it wont really boot up.. or boot any other device up.

hrm, thats really weird that the pavillion still is not working..

Im saying ESD.. but, you might wanna check to see if the processor is totally in the socket, and the HSF is making good contact.

[Bighunk]

HSF i'm guessing stands for Heat Sink Fan?

<~ new :D

What would happen if I flashed the bios? (what is that done for)?

[Mehmet]

Originally posted by Bighunk
HSF i'm guessing stands for Heat Sink Fan?

<~ new :D

What would happen if I flashed the bios? (what is that done for)?

yeah, the heatsink.

the bios flash would update features and problems with the current board.

but, since you can even get it to POST, that wont work.

[Norm]

I've been reading along trying to figure this one out. Hard to say without knowing what the kids actually did. They may have turned off the onboard video in BIOS.
If you have a spare PCI video card, give it a try, and hook the monitor to it.

It does sound like a short though. Possibly the mobo is fried, or the PSU (power supply)

I've seen this with lots of prebuilt PC's, and it's usually the mobo, or a part of it that is dead.

But try a PCI vid card anyway, you never know.

[The Dude]

Maybe the kids were trying to make it bigger better faster? Maybe they tried to overclock it so they could play their game? I may be way of base here but it's gust a thought.

[Bighunk]

Originally posted by The Dude
Maybe the kids were trying to make it bigger better faster? Maybe they tried to overclock it so they could play their game? I may be way of base here but it's gust a thought.

well I don't know them very well, but one of them is about 12-14 yrs. old, and the other a couple of years younger... at 25, already I frequently catch myself thinking "kids these days..." but I don't know how computer saavy my sister's nephews-in-law really are. (oh yeah, and also I'm still not too sure of what or how that overclocking thingamajiggy is, therefore I don't know what to look for as far as evidence)...:D

but here's what I did do yesterday after I had given up on my sister's HP issue: While trying to see what kind of RAM was faster on my own 1700+ which has 1 GB of sdram, I borrowed the veggie HP's 256MB ddram stick for testing purposes, and guess what - my pc did(or didn't do) exactly the same thing: just powered on, I could hear the fans, but the HD and monitor were dead.

so I think I may have accidentally found the problem on my sis' pc... would've tried putting one of my sdram sticks on the HP, but it's only got buses for ddram..

heading out to do some ddram stick shopping down at the computer store here in Tijuana a bit later... i'll keep you guys posted.

[Bighunk]

Originally posted by ghettoside
check the RAM first!

ghettoside, you may have been on to something...

I take back everything I thought about you...

:p