I have an older Compaq computer that will not boot up for me. I decided to restart it one day and it just wont do anything now. I tried to unplug both hard drives, floppy drive, and cd drives and it does nothing. The only thing I can see on the screen is the red Compaq screen that comes up when you first start it. No matter what I unplug it wont do anything different. Any suggestions?
When you hit the escape key at the red screen does it show any error messages, or did it place an error message way in the top-left corner?
Does it beep or give any kind of message or anything, if not then I’d say the next step would be to leave everything unplugged like it is. And the:
-Remove power, and pull the CMOS battery.
-While the battery is out pull the memory, check for corrosion/dirt. If it’s discolored use a pencil eraser to clean the contacts.
-Put memory back, along with the battery and try again.
-Try to boot the system up with no drive
If it still locks on boot then:
-Remove any addons card installed
-Try again, if it fails then.
-Unplug all unnecessary devices. So that you only have the keyboard, monitor and power connected.
If it still fails to do anything and you can’t get to a point to even change BIOS settings or no beeps/errors:
-Reseat the CPU
Can’t think of much more beyond that, if it’s still stuck there then it might be time for a new computer. Best case scenario it just a unnoticed error in the top-left as per Compaq style. That a lot of people tend to over look.
replace the battery maybe?
wait, so does it go past the the compaq screen, or does it get stuck on it.
it may not be recognizing an OS, and just not going any further