Very slow BIOS/POST on Compaq PC

Hi everyone, I am working on a Compaq Presario 4400 that only gets far as the POST screen.

When I turn on the PC, I get the Phoenix BIOS version screen along with the Primary/secondary master,slave info. Below that it says:

Press F9 to select booting device after POST.
Press DEL to enter setup.


[SIZE= "2"](Situation 1) If I press nothing, I get a long delay and finally get the screen that has the "PCI device listing" along with the "Verifying DMI Pool Data "....
"Boot to CD "...After that, it sticks there.

(Situation 2) If I press F9, I get a long delay and finally get "Loading Boot Menu ". Then I select "HDD-0 ". After that, I get the screen that has the "PCI device listing" along with the "Verifying DMI Pool Data "....After that, it sticks there.[/SIZE]

I have cleared the CMOS, tried new IDE cables, and have tried switching the IDE cables into the opposite slots on the motherboard. The hard drive and CD rom drives are being detected after a delay.


I was told this PC started acting like this when Radio Shack told the person to pull the sound card. Instead of pulling the sound card (its onboard anyway!, they pulled the "Memory Chip" as I was told. Can anyone explain to me why I am not getting XP to load and why the boot up screen is SO SLOW? Any help would be greatly appreciated!

 

This may sound crazy but did the person pull the memory while the PC was on? Was the memory reinserted correctly? Did they dislodge any connections? Was it the memory they pulled? The motherboard may have been damaged. What was the original problem before that Radio Shack *cough* expert told them to pull the sound card?

 

Thanks for the reply. After looking closer, I noticed a gold piece from the memory missing! After looking into the memory slot very closely, I noticed the gold piece and removed it. Also, I noticed a few gold pins that set in the memory slot were bent or missing. Problem solved most likely.


It's good to know you pretty much pointed to that anyways. Great job! It's good to know how experienced people like you are and how helpful you are. Thanks again!