Presario Headaches

Hi...
Been a couple years since I've been around here ....things have changed ....

Anyway , I've been tinkering with this Presaio 7174 for awhile now and am running out of hair to pull out ...Specs are

Camaro motherboard ....128mb ram (dimm) ..onborad SIS agp video ...28 gig harddrive ...Windows 98 SE ...VIA busmaster chipset ...500 mhx AMD processor

This thing, when powered off either by software or the front panel power button will stubbornly refuse to reboot unless you tap the F10 key (used to access bios) ...from outward appearence, you would think it was in Standby except the hard drive is spinning ...

things I have tryed ...
Ide cables...
different hard drive
different floppy drive and cable
different power supply
Flashed bios (Compaq diagnostics comfirm success of flash)
Different CD rom drive
2 different bios batteries
PCI video card ..

ALmost convinced it APM problem, but clueless as to the next step...can anybody offer a hot tip?

TIA
Jake

 

Hi Triger
This is a Presaio 7174...and not a 7471...correct?

No help I know...but I'm looking.

 

Oops.....pappy always said "no use being dumb if nobody knows about it .....you are correct ...it is a 7471 ..........my humble apologies .........can't beliveve I did not see the typo when i reread the message ....blush

Jake

 

Not a problem.
You say it happens on a reboot? What about completely shutting it down, then turning it back on? Does it happen then too?

Have you taken a gander through any of this yet?

 

Hi...

That is precisely where the problem exists ....when the machine is powered off ..either by software or the power button on the front....a simple restart cause no problems what so ever....

and yes, I downloaded MS$ troubleshooter and it discovered no errors at all .....but please don't let that stop you from suggesting.....never know .....it may make me think of something I have not attempted

Also....3 trips over to compaq and 3 online chats with tech support resulted in the ever popular "please take it to an Authorized support center" ...I did not bother to tell them that is the very reason my friend has this machine ....the authorized support center could not fix the first one she bought.....

Jake

 

Uh oh! The pressure.

Ok...... if you've tried swapping almost everything out....... how be stripping it to it's barest essentials?

*edit*
Oh! Does it start ok if you choose safe mode?

 

I have one (not a compaq) that works beautifully with 98FE but will not shut down with 98SE. Have been through all the hoops right down to flash the BIOS, which can't be done on that particular board, so I believe that's where the problem lies. Maybe this applies to you too, Triger. Have you checked for an update?

 

Hey ...thanks for taking the time to answer ...

I'm afraid I am not doing very good at explaining the problem tho ...

Let me put it this way ...if you unplug the power cords on both the monitor and the computer ...then plug them back in and power up, the hard drive whirls, the monitor goes into standby and you see absolutely nothing on the screen .....nor does the hard drive make the normal clicking sound you would hear when it is accessing files .....another words ..nothing

If however, you repeat the above procedure and power up while taping the F10 key, you can force it to start....

And, I have stripped it to nothing but hard drive and motherbard with no cards installed .....same results...

Jake

 

I think it's getting clearer. (You do know I'm rapidly being depleted of coffee at this point huh? )

What's your boot order set to?

And...... not to belabour the point.......
But can you start in safe mode, using F8 to boot instead of F10?

*edit*
And if you can't get into safe mode that way.....
Once you have booted...can you/ do you know how to use the System Configuration Utility to boot to safe mode?

 

Your doing fine.....the coffee has staying power

Anyway, I tinkered with boot order, but when stripped ...bios is intelligent enough to remove unavailable items....but it seemed to prefer ....floppy first ...Drive C: 2nd .......Cd 3rd

AS far as safe mode, I always set up a computer with tweakui and have the boot menu appear for 2 or 3 seconds ...which is the reason it did not occur to me to try that....and F1 and del keys produced no results, however ...

Just in passing, you might find this interesting ....in the system directory I found a file called "biosinfo.inf" which had a list of somebody's talley of troublesome bios chips and work arounds ....sure enough, in the list was compaq presario and the notation was problems with APM ......food for thought? huh?

Jake

 

Yeah....but...but....work with me here:

So...ummmmm...can ya boot to safe mode?

Uh.......no! Food for thought would be a lovely note telling us the answer we are seeking!

 

Triger,

I had the exact same issue with a Compaq 7471 (camaro) motherboard. This was a replacement board for a previous camaro that had constant locking up issues.

After ripping my hair out to solve the issue (tried almost all the same things you did) I ditched it and bought a replacement board. At the time a replacement socket 7 board went for about $30.

During the time that I worked on Compaq machines, we saw a lot of camaro boards with problems. That board is generally considered one of the poorest that compaq ever put its name on.

In the long run it may be a more reliable solution to replace the board.

Just my 2 cents.

ICE

 

Hi ....
Sorry it took so long to reply here ....

Daisy ....the answer is yes, once the red compaq logo appears on the screen ...you can boot to safe mode, Dos mode ....boot with log file .....everything will function normally till the next time it is powered off ...

However, I am just about persuaded that "Iceolated" may be correct .....and his reasoning could well be the force behind Compaq's desire to get this thing to an authorized service center......somehow, tho, I have this irresistable urge to pursue this for awhile to see if a solution is anywhere in sight....

my sincere thanks for all the contributions to date .....

Jake

 

Ice ....

Question ..? Do you recall tinkering with the VIA busmaster drivers in these machines? The reason I ask, I downloaded and installed VIA's version of those drivers and Voila ....things started to fly right ....it would actually boot reliably just by tapping the space bar....everything worked fine (modem, lan card etc ) till I plugged the Cd rom drive back in.....had trouble getting it to even recognize the drive ...That set of drivers has it's own version of APM management, DMA control, and Atapi support...even agp graphics accelerator....just wondering if any known quirks come to mind....?

Triger

 

Triger,

I went through every driver that I could find for the board. I had several different versions of VIA drivers but I can't recall which ones they were as hat was a couple of years ago.

That's decent that it will now start although tapping the space bar might get a bit annoying. Compaq didn't then and still doesn't offer chipset drivers for this machine on its website. Are you using the VIA 4 in 1 drivers?

I checked out VIAs site and they have previous versions of the 4 in 1 drivers here. You may wish to try some of those out if you believe the chipset drivers are the key.

Cheers,
ICE

 

Hi Ice ...
Thanks for taking the time to reply ....

What prompted this was a closer look at the results from Compaq Diag. utility, which included a blurb about sequential read error ...so I made a quick trip over to Western Digital's web site and grabbed their Diag utilty...did a complete test on the hard drive and came up clean ..Which made me think maybe Compaq's utilty was using the protected mode drivers ...sure enough, grabbed the oldest Via 4 in 1 driver set and gave it a whirl and Viola...I was even more astonished when the CD drive barf'd on me ...just happened to be the last thing I plugged back in ......grrrrrrrrh..

Anyway, tapping the space bar to get it started is not something I would call a fix ....but worth noting because finally the behavior of the machine was consistent ...in the long run, tho ....I tend to agree with you, this motherboard has a short life expectancy if the owner wants something dependable.....

Jake

 

Finally...

Just thought somebody out there might find this interesting, this particular Compaq will only work correctly with a Compaq keyboard ....grrrrh

After hours and hours of Hair pulling, got my hands on the keyboard that came with this machine......bingo.......everything works...boots everytime.


Cheers
Jake

 

YOU, are a genius Triger
Congratulations on finally getting it sorted. Thanks so much for taking the time to post back and let us know.

 

Thanks Daizy, genius is a real stretch tho.....maybe something on the order of "even a blind squirrel finds an acorn on occassion "...

I was just so flabbergasted ....what in the world could these engineers possibly have been thinking of ....never mind, probably better I don't know...

At any rate, this is one I'll not soon forget..

Cheers
Jake