PC not booting correctly

[bighead81]

Hello, I have a hp P1 133, 80 RAM 2.1 Gb hdd and cdrom.

Its an old machine, so i do play around with it, but recently i hve noticed that it does boot correctly.

When switched on, the fan comes on, i can hear (and see when the cover is off) the hard disk and cdrom being accessed, but normally the floppy drive is not accessed and there is no beep sound and the pc just freezes on the hp startup screen.

After a few attemps, it will boot up normally, with previous boot incomplete message dislpayed in dos and it runs fine in windows.

It has been recently formatted (althought i don't think this is the problem as i hve done this sevral times) so i doubt its a software issue.

In bios the cdrom is the primary master, is that correct, although when i changed it around, it did nothing.

I have had partitions on the hard disk in the past, now removed, could this be an issue. I ran hard drive and RAM utility test programmes, both of which found no errors.

This is a recurrent pattern. Please help.

Thanx

 

[mudskipper]

I think (correct me if I'm wrong) that if you hit the tab key during the HP logo screen, it will go away and show your the details of your POST screen. You might do this when starting up, and then let us know if it is erroring, what it says when it hangs, or any other pertinent info! ----------------------------------------
Groucho Marx said it best...
"A child of five could understand this. Fetch me a child of five."

 

[NEMS]

You said that is old machine and you just playing around with that. We'll I believed you. How about having fun cleaning all the slots with pressurized electronic cleaner (use the one without any oil residue. e.g CRC or V-90). Also remove all the dust inside the CPU. I'm sure you will have more fun after doing this basics. Good Luck.