Need some help with computer please

[Boar]

Got my son a computer for his birth day, HP brand from Wally world. dont know if that was a mistake or not. its been working just fine until he got home from school an he turns it on an an the moniter says DVI no signal then turns to A BLANK SCREEN WITH A BLINKIN CURSOR in the upper right corner, anyone know what this means. we unhooked the cord that indicats DVI an reconnected both DVI connection from the hard drive an the monitor, still dose the same thing, any help would be great, thank you. Boar

[upnorth]

Is the PC itself running? Light on the front of the tower, press the numlock and or the caps lock keys. If nothing is lit you are probably not powered up. Check the power etc too.

[Boar]

The tower is on. The whole system is on the keyboard has an amber color light under a number 1.

[CAMAN]

It is a known issue with some HP brand computers.

Call up HP support, it sounds like it is still under warranty so you shouldn't have any issues with getting it fixed.

[B. Amish]

sounds like a very similar thing that happened to my hp dv6000 laptop. i try to power it up and all the lights come on, it whizzes and hums, but the screen never comes on, then it tries to restart and the process goes on and on.

from the intranet, it's a very common problem for hp and they attribute it to a bad motherboard or graphics chip. there was a class action law suit a couple years ago, but i was never informed about it, and now the claims process is over.

question: can i recover my files with this issue?

[upnorth]

Recovering the files would entail attaching the drive to another PC. I have done it several times with XP, but not with windows 7 or Vista. I think they add another layer of security, but still doable I am sure.

[Lowblazah]

is there a thumbdrive/external harddrive/cd or DVD or anything inserted into the machine while this is happening?

[lotsofish]

Usually this problem is related to the computer itself, usually the power supply, motherboard or cpu (yours probably has an integrated video card). However, it's possible that a problem with the monitor could actually cause the same message. Before you go too far with it, you might just want to plug in a different monitor, or plug in the monitor to a different known working machine just to confirm.

[Boar]

yea my son has a flash drive pluged into it. well buying it from wall mart ill just take it back an exchange it till we get one that works. He doent have much for files, hes had it a week. Thanks guys really appreciate it.

[upnorth]

This is out there but I had one of out docs come in yesterday and had an issue where he had a USB 3 drive plugged in and the PC(His personal) wouldn't boot and yes it was an HP. As soon as he unplugged the USB drive it would boot up fine. He has been on the phone with HP and the drive vendor and neither has a viable solution other than unplug the drive until the PC is up and running. I assume there is a BIOS issues and no update to fix it yet.

In short I would unplug the drive and see what happens. I would also unplug everything other than the keyboard and the mouse and see if will go.

[Nick Kuhn]

My guess is if this is a recent system, it likely uses a Sandy Bridge based processor which will have the GPU located on the processor die itself. Now, HP doesn't save much money on the processors, where they save their money is by using dirt cheap motherboards. My guess is they used a motherboard with a weak power phase system to the GPU. Here is an example of a 4 phase system (note that this is a fairly cheap board, as there is no heatsink on the GPU power phases, but there is on the CPU). My guess is inadequate power to the GPU due to a poor power phase system. If the processor SoC were damaged you would see something completely different. This will require a new motherboard in all likelihood, as this is a hardware issue.

The only thing you could try is to remove the power connector for a case fan and the hard drive (it won't boot the OS but it will run) to see if a slight bump on the 12V rail can give you stability (it will go to the BIOS). If that's the case, a new power supply might do the trick.

[Jim43]

Same issue with my Dell XPS 730x. If I leave a usb thumb drive connected during boot-up it stalls the bios screen and takes forever to start. Unplug

the usb drive and the bios screen clears right away and starts up. I think

the Thumbdrive might be taking over the startup stalling the boot-up.

This is out there but I had one of out docs come in yesterday and had an issue where he had a USB 3 drive plugged in and the PC(His personal) wouldn't boot and yes it was an HP. As soon as he unplugged the USB drive it would boot up fine. He has been on the phone with HP and the drive vendor and neither has a viable solution other than unplug the drive until the PC is up and running. I assume there is a BIOS issues and no update to fix it yet.

In short I would unplug the drive and see what happens. I would also unplug everything other than the keyboard and the mouse and see if will go.

[Boar]

wen u guys say thumb drive I assume ur talking about a flash drive right?

[upnorth]

USB flash drive thumb drive etc.

[delcecchi]

Isn't there a bios setting telling it where to boot from in what order?

[Jim43]

Isn't there a bios setting telling it where to boot from in what order?

Yes there is, and I have mine set not to read anything from them. But somehow

they highjack the bios on boot-up if left plugged in for some reason. I have

my bios updated to the latest and its just a strange issue for sure. Then again, if remember right, my system will continue charging USB ports when turned off. That could be my my roadblock.

BYW, sorry to Hijack your issue with your sons computer, Wally World will replace it.

[upnorth]

Isn't there a bios setting telling it where to boot from in what order?

The one issue I seen bypassed the BIOS boot order. It was pretty strange. It would almost seem the USB device was literally saying I am the master boot device use me.

[SpecialK]

My HP laptop hangs like others have said as well if something is plugged in (i.e flash / thumbdrive, external hard drive or my cell phone).

Never over look the obvious either, check the video cable going from the computer to the monitor and make sure it is attached, seated and the screws are snug. Maybe remove the cable and re-attach just to make sure the screws were not cross threaded which would have allowed the connector to pull out a little bit. I have seen that more than once as well.

[straydog]

My HP laptop hangs like others have said as well if something is plugged in (i.e flash / thumbdrive, external hard drive or my cell phone).

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