Presario F700 Startup
The Problem
After only having our Compaq Presario F700 for a little over a year we started to have a serious problem. By serious I mean when you turn the laptop on the lights would flash it would start to load the bios screen / POST (power on system test) and then after 30 seconds it would reboot. Once it powered back on guess what it did? You got it recycled after 30 seconds. Very frustrating!
Even more frustrating is to my shock there are 1000s of posts online about start-up issues with this model. Many of the scenarios sounded just like what I was saying however, although the posters tried to ensure me the reader that they had the fix for everyone having the same problem none of the fixes worked!
The Solution
The laptop is mainly used by my wife downstairs while we watch tv with me on the other computer. After messing with the recycling laptop for too much time I "placed" it in another room out of frustration. Then we got smart phones which allowed my wife to connect to the web / email while downstairs so the laptop remained left in the other room for at least 3 months.
Having an IT repair background I eventually got back on the case of the recycling laptop. By this time there were even more posts and complaints about the same issue. After reading some posts I concluded that there was an undocumented feature that would allow the laptop to stay on instead of recycling. By pressing the ESC key immediately after the power light comes on causes the laptop to go into a maintenance mode. While in this mode it would remain on but not complete POST or load Windows. Pressing the power button during the maintenance mode should cause the fan to power up. Reading other posts I saw solutions such as using a hair dryer to heat up lose soldiering, replacing cmos batteries, and replacing fans. This made me think. I realized that I didnt hear the fan power on. So I tried using compressed air on the fan. No help. So I tapped it a few times and guess what? It worked! I am not going to make any promises and say that this is the fix for your laptop but it is worth a try. Now I need to figure out why I am having issues with my video going crazy intermittently but that will be a different hub!
Some "useful" tips from Compaq for startup issues:
http://h10032.www1.hp.com/ctg/Manual/c02114796.pdf