Packard Bell problems

Hi, i am trying to fix a pc, it is a Packard Bell ixtreme Z839.

It has been formated and loaded with Win Xp home, after Serice pack 2 is installed it freezes at the windows splash screen and will not boot.

I have downloaded the recovery boot disc from the support page, booted to it and entered the serial number,it then asks for the master disc 1, the owners did not recieve any master discs or a windows cd, the version of win xp home was perchased seperatly.

I thought the recovery setup was partioned onto the hard drive, but with this one im not sure.

If i can preform a low level format on the hdd will it remove the Packard bell software that is causing the problems? or is there somthing on the MB?





please help.

 

Open up the MB, and then Take out the RAM sticks and put them back. If that doesnt work, check if all the components are connected properly, and you might also try taking out all the components and reconnecting them from scratch.

This happened to me after installing SP2 - it was basically an AGP problem, the RAM chips and graphics card was not installed properly.

If that doesnt work, go and do the low-level format.

 

Ok thanks ill try that

 

For me, it happened after installing SP2, because my graphics card was working in PCI mode without the drivers. SP2 would install the correct drivers, but cause it to hang because the AGP card and RAM was not installed properly.

 

Hi, this might be the same problem, the graphics card is in the agp slot, but in bios settings is listed as pci, so what did u do?

ive removed the ram and gc and replaced them, there was no change after restart but i havent changed the install, its still trying to boot into windows xp home sp2.

thanks.

 

Found a fix an is now working.

I set the GC to AGP from PCI (dont know how it got set as PCI)
Flashed the BIOS
Reset the MBR
Deleted partions an set up new ones.


unrelated to this problem but still interesting, while updating the Win XP installation with security patches (could not use discs) Nod32 caught and deleted 23 viruses/Trojans, also stopped a spyware scam.

All those threats come in through windows, as no browsing or email etc had been done, nothing except win update site. If u plan on formating or doing similar make sure your protected before going online.