Hello all. My dad recently recieved a "dead" Hp Pavilion 7955 from his job. When the machine is turned on, before the windows splash screen, it said that windows cannot load because it is missing a ntoskrnl.exe file. I couldn't get passed that screen in safe mode neither. So using the Windows XP CD, i decided to format the hard drive and install a fresh copy of Windows XP. I boot from the CD and everything goes smooth until it gets to the process where it looks for previous installations of Windows XP. The computer reboots. Again with the XP CD, i went into recovery console and tried to run scandisk. While doing scandisk the computer restarts again. I tried the reinstall again and this time it got passed the "seaching for previous installations of Windows XP". i formatted and reinstalled windows. The whole process went fine and i was able to now boot into windows. I figured the problem was software related until i ran into other problems. If i go to system tools under the Start Menu, the computer restarts. I tried to install Sisoft Sandra to help diagnose any problems but during the installation the computer restarted. I thought maybe the Hrd drive was to blame so i switched with a known working hard drive but after the HP logo, all i get is that black screen with a blinking white dash in the upper left hand corner. I left it on for a good ten minutes and nothing. I tried booting to a boot disk, but the same thing happens. Does the bios have limitations where it only boots to the hard drive that came with the computer? If thats the case i thought of flasing the bios but i read on the HP site that the bios rom extracts itself to the Hp partition on the hard drive but i deleted that partition. So now how am i to flash the bios? Any help would be appreciated...thanks.

"Does the bios have limitations where it only boots to the hard drive that came with the computer" No. Check your RAM, pull all ummecassyt PCI cards out. When all else fails beat the $%!* out of it!!!

Try joining this forum exclusively for HP computers... http://forums1.itrc.hp.com/service/forums/home.do?forumId=2&admit=716493758+1092614405755+28353475 They have been very helpful with my HP 8693 C I used to use.

If you can keep the system on long enough to start it up, right click on my computer, system properties, advance tab, startup and recovery, uncheck the automatic reboot. Next time the system fails, you should see what is causing the system to reboot. Also try editing the Boot.ini file with a "/sos" switch, as this can also help in the diagnosis. It is placed after the switch "/fastdetect". This will help on boot up of windows to see where it hangs if the system is crashing on boot. Bill Mcneil and Chick Hazard ROX