Remove the DVD drive, see what happens.

Also see:
http://docs.slackware.com/howtos:har...re_diagnostics

Hi,

One other suggestion is to press a key & hold it. Try the F10 key when you power up. If you get no beep codes then the system is not doing a POST. The sticky key(pressing & hold) F10) on power up and holding would produce feedback (key error) or pass to the POST a BIOS menu request.

One other thing is to check on the CPU heat pipe to make sure no slippage and still has positive contact if not then this would cause overheat condition that would produce CPU shutdown for safety if the heat sink has moved or loose.

Do you have the battery in while plugged to AC? If so remove the battery but leave the AC plugged to system then try a boot.

Hope these help.
Have fun & enjoy!

I've tried all suggestions. No Luck. The problem occurs during POST. When it gets to the DVD drive it hangs. Hard resetting had no result along with hardware tests (as in memory, external screen, and any other peripherals.). Multimeter cleared any chance of hardware failure. What would make it glitch like this?

Mobo failure or a bad BIOS flash. Did you flash the BIOS recently, because Slackware doesn't touch it. You could search the net and try some old hacks for fixing the BIOS like using floppies and magic key stroke patterns, etc.

Hi,
How would the multimeter clear any chance of hardware failure? You checked the PSU voltages? OK? No, I think you are mistaken, the POST should pickup the key-press if you sticky any key, you would get a keyboard sticky key error. You are mistaking the hardware reset sent to the DVD drive, this is a hardware timeout. Not a glitch, it does seem to be a hard failure and not intermittent. Not having a beep code or the sense of key-press during POST indicates a system undetectable failure or not processing. Your system is not POST(ing) or your system speaker is not passing/producing the beep code.

You did check the heat pipe for positive mount?

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as there is always sayed, no any multimeter can prove, hardware is ok. even oscilograph not proven that with high accuracy.

For first, give us all hardware names -what motherboard ( manufacturer, model, socket number, so on), RAM, hdd, case, psu...
also i have a many cases, when PSU give ok voltage, but with spikes, who multimeter not show ( logically), and computer not work from this.
i also have a cases, when one mobo work with one PSU, and another - not. for example, my home desktop motherboard - intel dg965ss - is a bit too sensible in that direction.
I be sure, there we encounter pure hardware problem, who topicstarter, due its small knowledge and understanding of principes and logic, cannot resolve.
I recommend to go to computer technician, and give hem this task.

Your motherboard, CPU, RAM or graphics adapter may have failed. Here are some additional suggestions.

Remove all RAM except for one RAM module. If the system does not start up, replace that RAM module with a different RAM module. That will eliminate the possibility of a bad RAM module causing the problem.

If possible, plug in a different graphics adapter. The graphics adapter is a likely component to fail. If you have an on-board graphics chip then plug in an adapter temporarily for testing.

Disconnect the keyboard and see if the BIOS gets further.

Your motherboard may have a "BIOS recovery" feature. If the BIOS flash has become corrupted or erased then you can use BIOS recovery to reload the BIOS. There is usually a switch or jumper, key-press or other way to start BIOS recovery. You will have to read the motherboard and BIOS documentation to find that information. Usually you create a USB stick, floppy or CD with the BIOS software ahead of time (on a different computer). The BIOS recovery mode will read from the device and reprogram the BIOS flash. Not all motherboards support BIOS recovery. If not, you need JTAG or some other special hardware to reprogram the BIOS flash.

You can't easily test the CPU unless you happen to have another working motherboard compatible with the CPU. Also, you can't easily test the motherboard or BIOS flash.

You can visually inspect the motherboard. Look for any charred spots, bulging capacitors (that look like small cans), broken circuit traces, disconnected components or component leads. Check for solder splashes or badly installed components that might be shorting to each other. Also check for foreign objects such as screws, foil, or wire cuttings that might have landed across something and caused a short. Check for bent or shorted pins on ribbon cable connectors (from plugging in the cable).

Unplug un-necessary fans (except for the CPU fan!). You can usually disconnect the case fan with the case open.

Check the connections to the front panel connector. Those are often individual wires and the connector pins may bend and short to other pins from pulling on the wires.

That's about all you can do without a motherboard schematic and test equipment.

I've seen a PSU failure do some really weird things, like leaving a CPU fan slowly turning in a series of pulses, no other symptoms.

Things like this are immensely frustrating to troubleshoot, you have my sympathies!

If the fans are not working properly then I would agree that the PSU would be likely.

What exactly happens between the second and third sentence? I can't find the answer to what prevents F10 from loading the BIOS menu as suggested?
1. keyboard failure, 2. mobo failure, 3. pebkac?

My HP Envy mobo failed last New Year, like a door nail . No POST, beep, nada. Just fans full on. It's replaced now, but meh. Good luck to you.

My apologies for the delay. I have another hp laptop that I swapped all my hardware with and it all checked out. It was a bad install I guess because when I booted up the HD on my other hp, Slackware crashed after BIOS check and started having the same problem. Shorted the cmos battery and the problem stopped. As for the Pavilion no luck. It literally loops right after power on. I've tried reseating the CPU, disconnecting all hardware still no POST beeps from the point of powering on and when it starts to loop POST doesn't get very far.

Does a swap the other way round (i.e the HD of the other laptop into the Pavilion) work?

If so, your Pavilion isn't bricked and this would point to the Slackware install on your HD or the HD itself.
Can you access the bios/uefi setup at all (I did not get this from your posts) ?

How do you boot? Via bios/lilo or uefi/elilo ??? Was this the same for both HDs?

If bios/lilo hangs you'll see a blinking dash and nothing more...
When uefi booting doesn't work you can get a black screen (this can happen because of, say, a badly formatted Efi System Partition on your HD and the system can't go)


But the fact that you had KDE running before it stopped..... . would mean that the Slack install had gone OK. In that case, your swap experiment suggests a HD failure.



I once had a self-built computer running (with my very first linux install!) for 8 hrs before it blew up. A fan in the chassis gave up and all components, from PSU to MOBO and Graphics card, went with it and had to be replaced.

I once had a Zepto with a Nvidia card that had bricked on the spot, like many HPs that had suddenly died by overheating (around 2007); the insulation of the graphics card was the main suspect (Some people managed to reverse it by using a blow-drier to 'unmelt' the stuff that shortened the mobo -- if I remember this correctly).

In both cases pressing the power-button was a useless exercise as nothing happened. But in your case it is still trying to start up???

Good luck with sorting this out.

This sounds like a case of too many chefs ruining the soup. And yes, here I am another chef to spoil it further. lol...

Try one thing at a time. Make a list. Swapping multiple components at the same time will make ruling out items impossible.

IMO, it's either the PSU or RAM. I would start there.

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Thank you all for the help. Turns out linux bricked the BIOS. Desoldered the chip and re-programmed it. Fully working now. During my research I found that HP Pavilion dv5000- HP Pavilion dv8000 have had this problem with many Linux distros.

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I'm surprised you had a flash programmer to do that. Wasn't it possible to use a JTAG interface to reprogram the flash? I've got neither a flash programmer nor a JTAG interface, so I'd be out of luck even if I could unsolder one of those flash chips without damaging it.

Luckily, I've been able to install Slackware on my HP Pavilion DV9000 without any problems.