HP 740N has no OS?

patddfan

I'm having issues with my HP 740N PC. I have tried to install Windows XP, Windows 98 SE, and Red Hat Linux on this machine with all three failing to even launch the setup properly. when I tried to run the linux installer, it said something about the drive being unmountable. I also tried running a diognostic CD I found on bootdisk.com, but, upon launch, the screen flickered for 10 seconds, then went blank. is this machine still usable, or should I use the parts in other machines? if it is still usable, how do I run Windows again?

gdea73

Boot to BIOS and see if your hard drive is recognized properly, and if so, enable SMART monitoring. Then boot to a copy of the Ultimate Boot CD, and use some of their "HDD" utilities to determine the physical condition of the hard drive. If there aren't any severe errors detecting the hard drive, or bad sectors, you should be alright to install an OS. My bet is that either the partition table / MBR is messed up (in which case you should just format it with FDISK or similar), or that it's just a dead or dying hard drive. In which case I would assume all you need is an EIDE hard drive, which shouldn't be too expensive or hard to obtain.

Also, test your RAM, with memtest86+, also included on the UBCD.

iandun

First thing is first:

1. Your hard drive is probably dead. Get a new one. Of course, if you can load the BIOS setup utility, do so and see if a hard disk exists. If not, its time for a new drive

2. If you can't start the BIOS setup utility, does the computer produce beeps? If it does, look in the computer's manual to see what number of beeps equals what.

patddfan

well, with windows 98, I got an ms-dos extender error, but I can get into BIOS and the drives are intact

patddfan

so i found out my memory is bad...

gdea73

RAM is cheap these days, buy some and you're good to go.

If you're talking DDR1, it does still disappoint me that it's not free yet, like PC133.