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Hi, I have this HP Media Center 873n that I have been trying to repair and it is not working. I have tried everything I can think of and I can't figure it out so I thought I would try here. Just so you know, I am very experienced and have tried known good parts.



I got this computer and it was locking up during bootup. It passes post but freezes during windows boot/splash screen. I tried using the destructive restore and it seemed to go fine until I got to the part where you enter language, time zone, and stuff and when it got there, it went into super slow turtle mode so I ended up quitting on it because it locked up and took forever( over an hour) to get off one page! So then I thought I would try restoring it with a factory xp pro copy instead of the HP media center restore. I only formated the main partition and left the recovery partition in tact but I heard I killed that because formatting the regular partition you loose the msinst folder or something like that but no biggie because I have a retail version of xp pro to use if I can get it to work. I changed boot order to boot from cd and windows goes through like normal and loads files needed, but when it reboots it comes up and should go to the install screen where normally states 40 mins remaining, but it is just blank teal/greenish screen with the curser. I can move the mouse and it doesn't seem to be locked up but never goes past that. I have tried new hard drives, new ram, new video card and nothing helps. I also tried to strip it down to just dvd drive, hd, ram, video card and install that way basically just removing the tv card, media card reader, floppy, cdrom, and soundblaster audio card. When I remove them, it won't boot or come on at all! I figure HP must have something stored in ROM that will not allow it to boot if stuff is removed since it won't power on with items removed or unhooked. I have never had a problem repairing or restoring a pc like this before EVER! Normally if I do, I swap some HW with know good HW and find bad part and replace it. My problem is, I can't find any HW bad on this PC! Motherboard passes post and boots fine, I ran Windows Memory Diagnostic to check and see if maybe MOBO was having problems writing to RAM but all tests are passing with not a single error and it has been running for at least couple hours now or more.



I have racked my brain on this thing for days now and can't figure it out. Only thing I can think of is that the bios has some stupid setting in it blocking me from installing xp pro since it stopped it from booting when I removed items that should not matter if they are connected or not! Has anyone had this problem or know how I can fix it? Anyone know where I can get a bios update for it or a copy of the bios so I could possibly re-flash it. It has pheonix-award ver 6.0 rev 3.13 currently. It says i845q-lpc47m1-6a69vf0kc-00 at the bottom of the bios diag screen during startup if it might help.



Thank you for your time and help with this problem and I'm sorry the question is so long but I wanted to give as much detail as possible and try to avoid everyone answering with stuff I have already tried! I will check in often and will to try about anything! I will choose best answer and give credit if someone comes up with a solution that works! =)

Thanks for the responses so far but I have tried both! I have tried 3 different hard drives, 3 sets of ram, and 2 different video cards that I know are all good!



I have also ran the memtest many passes and let it run for 3+ hours without a single error so I shut it off.

I will try running a linux distro and see if that will work.



Yes I have tried resetting the bios by removing the battery for 30mins-1hr and it didn't help.



I tried replacing the components 1 at a time but it wouldn't boot until all were back in besides dialup modem and floppy. It didn't care about those two but requires the others.

I'm sure the format of the hard drive is not the problem since I have used 3 different hard drives! ;-)

I even thought maybe it was overheating even though I doubted it so I busted out two extra fans and placed them inside for extra cooling. Just thought I would add this before someone mentions it.

Ok, I just loaded linspire (lindows) and it boots and runs it fine. It was the only linux distro I could find that I have laying around. So I imagine that it isn't a hardware issue which puts me back in a bind of why it won't install windows!

Rick: Thanks for the response....I have the restore partition still on the original hard drive. It has all the drivers and apps on it. I used my USB cable, connected it to my pc, and checked it and they are all there. I have tried installing a clean install from XP disk on one of my hard drives and no luck. I connected another (3rd) hard drive to my computer, formatted it using disk manager and then connected it to my clients pc and tried clean install on it, still exact same problem so I don't think it is the MBR! I have never had a problem fixing HPs in the past and never seen one act like this with reguards to the hardware causing no boot. I have over 10 HP/compaq computers laying around here and never had a problem like this before or with any computer I have ever worked on for that matter. I'm not worried about a little extra work installing drivers and apps if I can just get a copy of windows to install!!! I guess i'm going to see if I can find the bios reset jumper and try it!

None of these figured out why it won't boot without the sound card which is really strange, but I'm choosing the best answer for the most helpful and he also helped through email! Thanks!!

I've had similar problems in the past while repairing an HP 800 series unit. In my case it was bad memory. If the machine is halting @splash like this I would highly recommend that you run several passes of Memtest.

If you dont have a copy of memtest, you can get it on the free UBCD@

http://www.ultimatebootcd.com

As for the machine not posting when the add-on cards are removed: Something is definatly wrong here. HP's have nothing that should prevent post when those things are removed.

It sounds as if your MBR is corrupt, so a manual format of the HDD should be performed, along with a clean OS install using the Restore CD's.

I know, lots of clients never make their restore CDs. This is a pain. If the client dosent have a cd of Restore cds or dvds for their machine - I really encourage you to have them order a set from HP. They are cheap - they arrive fairly quickly - and they will save you LOADS of time and hassle.

Lets say you decide to install an OEM version of XP. Then you will have hours of work ahead of you downloading and installing all of the missing drivers. Then what about the factory software, dvd decoder etc. It's all gone if you dont use factory restore cd's!


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In short: If this were a machine that I was working on - even if I thought the hardware was good: DOUBLE CHECK IT.

Use the UBCD to run DFT and MemTest atleast. If they both pass with no problems, then worry about getting the factory image restored.


Goodluck !

if you have a spare hard drive, mount it and try to install onto that.
the olny reason i say this, is i had the same problem about 1 year ago, and while the drive passed the diag., it had a bad sector.

I'm sure you've taken out the CMOS battery to restore defaults.
And wiped the drive with Dban or something similar in case there's remnants of a old installation blocking it up.
One thing to try is a Linux distro just to make sure the mobo and other hardware are functional. If you can even get a live CD of Puppy or Ubuntu or Damn Small or Knoppix to boot and run would be a small success. Then you know your hardware is good.

Have you tried resetting the BIOS by moving the jumper next to the CMOS battery over 1 pin? What about trying to wipe and format the hard drive using a floppy instead of a Windows cd, then trying to reinstall. Have you tried adding back hardware items one by one until it does boot again?