Hello again! I have been given a Compaq Presario V2000 w/AMD Sempron - which does this: it produces two short beeps while booting to Compaq screen and shows "press esc" for boot etc.. and then goes to a black screen that says "press f1 to resume, or f2 to setup". Except nothing happens when any key is pressed. I tried using a USB keyboard but still no response, I unplugged the laptop's keyboard and plugged in only the usb keyboard and still, nada. Knoppix Live CD inserted and the machine just hangs on the same screens and does not load anything... none of the keys work. It does spin the optical drive at every boot attempt though, whether or not there is a cd in there. I've taken out and re-seated the ram, swapped the ram positions, tried each one individually in each spot as well - always the same, except of course when there is no ram... then it goes beep nuts lol! From what I have read this happens pretty frequently on this particular model - in this exact way - the fellow who gave it to me said it was working one day and the next he got "the screens". To him it is old and he has 2 other laptops so he gave it to me. So now I've learned it happens a lot - BUT - no one has posted (that I could find) how to actually fix it. From HP I gather my beep codes (2 beep with 2 light flashes at caps/lock) mean corrupt bios - but if I can't get to the bios how can I help it recover? This is a pretty nice machine, very little wear and seems shameful not to bring it back to life - my Gram could fit this right next to her sewing machine and play scrabble with me if it worked! Any suggestions/experience with this situation out there? Cheers! ps: It didn't have any problem charging up it's battery which was dead when he gave it to me, it charged in about 5 hours and the charge light went off, and now only comes on if it's drained a little so it seems to be fine as far as power sources go. I have also tried taking out the battery and doing the hard re-set, and taken out the cmos battery for 20 mins as well... and yet, no joy .
Okay, what are the memory modules? Are they 1GB each? 512MB? If they are both 1GB, try and get hold of a 512MB sodimm and see if it boots up at that. Apparently, bios updates help the laptop recognise more ram - it could be the bios on yours is fairly out of date. The two beeps means it's very possibly a memory parity error, according to the last post at the bottom of this page.
Greetings! Thanks for the assist I couldn't swear to it but I'm guessing these are the original modules that came with the laptop - 512mb (256X2) is what it originally came with - they are both: Infineon HYS64D32020HDL-6-C 256 mb, DDR, 333 CL 2.5 PC2700-2533-0-A1 The fellow that I got it from didn't appear the messing about sort, so I doubt he tried to update the bios, but one never knows - he appears to have used it occasionally until he got this screen stalling behaviour. He took it to a PC repair shop and they told him it was a bad hard drive and $200 to fix so he opted not, since he has another pair of working laptops he couldn't be bothered. FTR, that shop was full of it - since without the hard drive you can still enter the bios - which you cannot - as I've taken the hard drive out and absolutely nothing changes in it's behavior. Is there any way to jumper pins to clear the cmos on a laptop motherboard like there is on a desktop? I've never worked on a laptop before so the whole scenario is my first go at it.
have to agree that its a mem problem! had this same problem years ago changed the ram and i was on my way again!
here's a simple little trick, try swapping the RAM around and or run with one stick and see if it posts and you able to get into the BIOS (I don't know if the AMD chipset requires both RAM slots to be paired). To me it sounds like the BIOS has lost boot order setting, are you able to F8 or F11 during post, this might show the Boot up options screen?
Did your original ram just croak then? I am on the hunt for some new sticks but haven't purchased any yet, I'm torn between sinking $60 for new ram or $80 for a new motherboard... Thanks for trying, but I've already tried the ram swap options (original post) and there is no response from any keys at any time from the moment the power button is pushed - I've tried them all, and an external keyboard as well. About the beeps... lol This is possibly a bit less straight forward - since all 2-beeps are not created equal, to my ears at least It is not a "double-beep" in terms of two beeps. Meaning it does not go "beep.. beep" and it does not repeat if that matters? There is actually a fair gap between them. Beep (caps light flashes)............... beep (num lock light flashes)............. This pattern does not repeat either, it does it one time and then sits on the "F1, F2" screen. One extra bit, I think there is a flash of words along the bottom after the 1st "Compag +esc" screen and the second "Press F1, F2" screen. I've asked a couple others to watch with me and they see it as well but none of us can read it it is so fast, or even swear that it's words. Pause/break of course doesn't work, so I've taken a video clip with my camera and am going to see if I can read in a frame by frame (it's lo-end video so it's a long shot). will report back, thanks folks
yeah years ago my mem just failed they were stretched abit to far and heated up badly to cause them to fail! thinking about it tho i should have got some heatsinks for them! but anyway back to the point, have you tryed to push pause on your keyboard at the exact point to see if you can see what it says? it should completely stop the computer dead in its tracks untill you push any other key for it to continue!
Have tried pause/break yup - but no key response. I did pull a frame from the movie, it's pretty grainy and hard to read but it looks like it just says the same as the last screen the "F1. F2" business. Been trying to post the pic but I'm having photobucket issues - be back when I've got it sorted, Cheers
FIXED - v2000 stuck on post Hello again =) Just wanted to stop by and leave word that I've gotten it fixed after all this time and thought it may help others to hear how. Turns out that even though my compaq V2000 is older, and with a different combination of cpu & gpu than is generally known for this common failure - the "motherboard reflow" that one can find all over the net to remedy those HP's with Nvidia chipset failures, also works with a number of other HP/Compaq models. I had read a few hundred posts from people who insisted they were having similiar issues with their laptops - even though HP refuses to acknowledge this fact beyond a few specific, recent models - long story shortened, I baked my mobo like the video DIY'ers show and voila! She be fine now Thanks again to those who tried to help me here, you were all very kind - and good luck to anyone else who lands here looking for a similar solution - be brave, if it's already broken you can't make it much worse!
