Running an HP Pavillion A1730N. Stopped mid use and will not reboot, no beeps. Only gets as far as the HP splash screen and then stops.

Config: AMD Athlon 64 X2 Dual-Core Processor 4600+
2.4GHZ, 512KB+512KB L2 Cache
2GB PC2-4200 DDR2 SDRAM
320GB 7200RPM Serial ATA hard drive
NVIDIA GeForce 6150 LE Graphics with 128MB dedicated graphics memory

No other cards than a modem. Harddrive and DVD are both onboard SATA
Scenarios:
1) When booting and it gets to the HP splash screen, there are 3 options presented, ESC(Boot Menu), F10(SETUP, and F11(System recovery). If you wait until you get to this screen and try to hit any one of those options, it will not respond and in about 1-2 mins, screen goes black and then the splash screen re-appears (keeps cycling like this)

2) If you start hitting ESC or F10 as soon as you power on, it will go to the boot menu or setup but then keyboard will not respond. You can see the boot menu and first screen of the setup but cannot navigate. Its as if the keyboard is dead (yes, tried another one). I can never get F11(system recovery) to come up.

If I put a bootable CD in the drive, in scenario #1, I eventually get message "Hit any key to boot from CD". No matter which key is pressed, it appears to ignore and times out booting from CD.

One thing to note, during initial power on, the keyboard lights flash. At no time after that will numlock, scrolllock lights work. After the initial boot, keyboard appears dead.

Tried reseating/removing DIMMs, moving SATA connections around, checking power connections, etc. With no DIMMS installed, it will beep so I know thats working. It seems to know when harddrive is being moved to new SATA port or when a DIMM is removed since it shows up on the initial setup screen but in no case can I navigate to anything else but what is presented on the first setup screen.

Any ideas? I'm thinking bad mobo. Was wondering if power supply could cause something like this?

I see I've had a few reviews but no feedback. I went ahead and replaced the motherboard. While hooking everything back up, the HP Pavillion comes with a front drive bay panel 5in1 memory card reader (CF, SD, sony, etc). When plugging this back in a normal USB port, the new motherboard detects an over voltage condition and shuts down. Removing that and hook everything else up now works fine on new mobo.

Q. Could this have been the problem all along? Could the old mobo not detect the over voltage, or could it have damaged the mobo? Has anyone ever seen an non-powered USB device cause something like this?

Is there a minimum power that a motherboard would need? This case came from HP with a ridiculously low PSU, 300w. Could it be that even though I have not added new cards or devices, the new M2A-VM mobo needs more than 300w?

Hello there, I have a HP a1619.uk with a ASUS A8M2N-LA motherboard. I have the same problem as you just explained perfectly. Keyboards not responding in bios so cant change any settings to sort this problem out. Although I have the latest bios version 3.10 and it hasnt been used much really.

What ive already tried........
1) I have taken the CMOS battery out for 1/2mins or so and put it back. Still nothing.
2) Used the hp steps to jump the board to reset itself. Still nothing.
3) Tried both ps/2 keyboard and ps/2 keyboard with converter > USB. Still nothing.

I have a feeling its something related to the motherboard or driver issues.

Its out of warranty now so does anyone have any suggestions of how to fix this problem.

Hello again. I had a look at all comments on this page made by ts18997 and iv finally solved the problem.

I disconnected the card reader bay from the pc and tried the keyboard again and it started working. So as a whole the card reader bay was at fault therefore it definately must have given over voltage or something making everything stop responding e.g. keyboard and so on.

So if any1 has this same problem disconnect your hardware one by one and hopefully you'l find out what was causing the problem. In my case it was the card reader.

Sooooo happi now...................... YIPEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE! HURAAAAY..

Hello,

I first sympathize with you and am happy to hear that you were able to get your system working again.

On Sunday, 080708, my girlfreind was playing Diablo (not important but is the scenario) game went into "Not Responding" she restarted and the cycle began. When I say cycle I mean exactly the same behavior that was posted here.

Computer would state the video card, then it showed HP splash screen, to end on a black screen with a cursor blinking in the upper left hand corner. Lather and Repeat. The standard troubleshooting we made the discovery that the keyboard would light up once and then stop working and the mouse (laser) would remain lit.

We first did a hardware reboot of the BIOS, no effect. Next, we tried running the hard drive in another computer to find a STOP error 0x7n. The error was persistant so we tried hooking it up as a secondary hard drive and we were able to back up all the data that was on it previously.

Again hooked it up as primary this time gave the choice to start Windows or Repair Utility and chose start Windows normally and STOP error returned we restarted this time choosing to Repair Utility which also failed. However it did give the recovery options however there were not any points that were there so only option to recover to factory settings.

This was successful after reboot (in another computer) Vista started doing its initial process, however when it came time to show me options to choose I recieved "Error in configuration settings" (lotsa text) and Code Purple. Code Purple seems to be the hard drive not mathcing the MOBO, a feature of HP. Anyway thinking all is well I hook up harddrive in original computer. And the cycling continued.

Next we tried reseating the RAM... no effect

Disconnected unneccesary hardware CD ROM, video card (used on board)...this had no effect

Tried USB keyboard...no effect

The LED indicator showing that it is posting but is not going any further.

Then we began scouring the internet and came across your post. We thought for sure this was going to be right (seeing how it was successful b4) disconnected the 9 in 1 and no effect. It is still cycling.


Specifications of machine
Config: AMD Athlonamd athlon 64 X2 Dual-Core Processor 4600+
2.4GHZ, 512KB+512KB L2 Cache
2GB PC2-4200 DDR2ddr2 SDRAM
320GB 7200RPM Serial ATA hard drive
NVIDIA GeForce 7800 GS Graphics with 256MB dedicated graphics memory

We welcome any suggestions.

Got a pavilion a1700n from a customer same symptoms, the fix was disconnecting the front panel usb from the usb 1 connector on the mobo, customer use to connect usb wireless kbrd mouse combo.