This sounds like the machine has a bad motherboard; that is not certain,
it's a good guess, but in these cases you usually can only deduce the
cause by eliminating other possible causes.

If there is nothing particularly imporant about this laptop, the best
solution is to sell it on E-Bay for parts, being honest about it's
condition. If you want to fix THIS laptop rather than just getting
another laptop, the best answer is to look for a laptop of the same
model on E-Bay that is working or that has a broken screen, or, possibly
just a motherboard from such a laptop. The cost of "repairing" a bad
motherboard in a 5-year old laptop should not exceed about $50 if you
can do the actual work yourself and just need the parts (e.g. a new
motherboard).


Jacques E. Bouchard wrote:
> A friend has an old Compaq Presario 3015 whose hard disk started failing
> until the laptop could not boot (it would ask to run chkdsk every time,
> then just cycled through coming back to the safe mode menu selection).
>
> I tried re-formatting (not the quick format) and re-installing WinXP, but
> the process was extremely slow and the computer would either hang or
> power off during the process. So I replaced the HDD with a brand new
> identical one (80 GB EIDE) and re-installed WinXP. The installation went
> without a hitch until the laptop rebooted, after which it began randomly
> powering off again.
>
> I used the original recovery CDs to restore the laptop to its original
> installation, but after it's done I get "hard disk boot sector invalid"
> and Windows won't boot up. Strange thing is, I tried recovering on the
> old drive, and the exact same thing happens. So it appears the old drive
> may not have been to blame after all.
>
> Is this the IDE interface gone bad?
>
> The computer's BIOS won't allow booting from USB (and no BIOS update is
> available), or I would have devised a way to run from an external USB
> drive. His only solution seems to be an expensive repair on a 5-year-old
> laptop, or an even more expensive new computer.
>
> Any ideas?
>
>
> jaybee