dobrien500
Thread Starter
- Joined
- Apr 10, 2004
- Messages
- 3
I have a second computer in the house that gave me alot of troubles and crashed about a year ago. I'm now trying to get it running again without spending too much$ Since it crashed my wife bought this fine Dell Dimension 4550 so the HP has been collecting dust.
It's an HP pavillion 8755 800 MHz P3 128 MB running windows ME. It claims to have 11 MB of shared video memory, but the BIOS says there is only 1 MB.
A little background on it. I bought it refurbed from Ubid about 3 years ago. It always had a lock up problem, although at first, when it was under warranty, it rarely happened so I didn't worry. As time passed the lock ups became more frequent. When it happened the computer would completely freeze, nothing functioned and whatever was on the screen remained there. No keyboard function, no mouse no Ctrl Alt Del, nothing would work.
So the computer would have to be turned off by holding the power button in. Then, here's the funky part, I would have to wait about 10 minutes before rebooting, otherwise it would lock up while loading the OS and desktop. And if I didn't wait long enough, then how far it loaded would depend on how long I had waited. In other words, If I waited just a few secondes it would lock up right after that little window said "getting system files". But if I waited say 6 minutes, then everything would come up on the desktop, but then it would freeze.
Certain programs made it lock up instantly, every time. WIndows media player 7 would ALWAYS INSTANTLY make it lock. It often locked on Realplayer, but not always. MS word would sometimes but not always lock it. Explorer hardly ever locked it.
One day it crashed and I couldn't reboot it, soon before that happened it was locking up very frequently.
I tried the HP ME recovery discs and tried the partial recovery so that I wouldn't lose files that I wanted (big lesson on backup's!). But when I ran the recovery discs it would lock up during the recovery, usually when it came time to remove disc 1 and put in disc 2.
I talked to our IT manager where I work, he suggested the HD might be the culprit. So he loaned me a brand new hard drive and also let me borrow windows 2000 installation discs to try instead of the ME recovery discs.
I installed the new drive, formatted it and then first tried the complete recovery using the HP ME recovery discs. Again, it gets through the first disc (there are 3 discs), then when it prompts for disc 2, the computer freezes. I put disc 2 in and hit K (OK) and nothing happens. I can hit every key, function key, C, A, D, nothing works. I also tried booting the recovery discs from the DVD drive, same problem.
I tried the windows 2000 installation with a similar problem, when I get to the stage where it asks for another disc ( he gave me a windows NT disc) to put in the drive, it locks.
So it's not the HD.
I did come across a similar problem on one of the posts on this web page. Someone had a pavilion 8665 I think with the same kind of lock up problem (but he didn't have the crash and recovery failure). The solution was to install a graphics card.
This has me thinking that maybe there's a problem with the on board graphics memory, and maybe something failed on it that made the lock up problem worse with time?
So now I'm thinking about buying a relatively cheap graphics card to see if that fixes the problem...any thoughts ?
It's an HP pavillion 8755 800 MHz P3 128 MB running windows ME. It claims to have 11 MB of shared video memory, but the BIOS says there is only 1 MB.
A little background on it. I bought it refurbed from Ubid about 3 years ago. It always had a lock up problem, although at first, when it was under warranty, it rarely happened so I didn't worry. As time passed the lock ups became more frequent. When it happened the computer would completely freeze, nothing functioned and whatever was on the screen remained there. No keyboard function, no mouse no Ctrl Alt Del, nothing would work.
So the computer would have to be turned off by holding the power button in. Then, here's the funky part, I would have to wait about 10 minutes before rebooting, otherwise it would lock up while loading the OS and desktop. And if I didn't wait long enough, then how far it loaded would depend on how long I had waited. In other words, If I waited just a few secondes it would lock up right after that little window said "getting system files". But if I waited say 6 minutes, then everything would come up on the desktop, but then it would freeze.
Certain programs made it lock up instantly, every time. WIndows media player 7 would ALWAYS INSTANTLY make it lock. It often locked on Realplayer, but not always. MS word would sometimes but not always lock it. Explorer hardly ever locked it.
One day it crashed and I couldn't reboot it, soon before that happened it was locking up very frequently.
I tried the HP ME recovery discs and tried the partial recovery so that I wouldn't lose files that I wanted (big lesson on backup's!). But when I ran the recovery discs it would lock up during the recovery, usually when it came time to remove disc 1 and put in disc 2.
I talked to our IT manager where I work, he suggested the HD might be the culprit. So he loaned me a brand new hard drive and also let me borrow windows 2000 installation discs to try instead of the ME recovery discs.
I installed the new drive, formatted it and then first tried the complete recovery using the HP ME recovery discs. Again, it gets through the first disc (there are 3 discs), then when it prompts for disc 2, the computer freezes. I put disc 2 in and hit K (OK) and nothing happens. I can hit every key, function key, C, A, D, nothing works. I also tried booting the recovery discs from the DVD drive, same problem.
I tried the windows 2000 installation with a similar problem, when I get to the stage where it asks for another disc ( he gave me a windows NT disc) to put in the drive, it locks.
So it's not the HD.
I did come across a similar problem on one of the posts on this web page. Someone had a pavilion 8665 I think with the same kind of lock up problem (but he didn't have the crash and recovery failure). The solution was to install a graphics card.
This has me thinking that maybe there's a problem with the on board graphics memory, and maybe something failed on it that made the lock up problem worse with time?
So now I'm thinking about buying a relatively cheap graphics card to see if that fixes the problem...any thoughts ?
