ZE4900 and SYSTEM HALTED, NO VIDEO, etc..

I am working on a Pavilion ZE4900 that is receiving multiple issuses...

This all started with no video. The person I am doing this for spoke with HP and the "tech guy" made her put a flashlight to the screen to see if this was an LCD issue (about a week ago, it has been off since). BTW? Nothing came of that step.

Although, I turned it on today and it worked fine. After, I removed some AdWare, uneeded apps (freeware, etc.), it seemed to be working great. Booted up fine from warm and cold boots with no issues. Well it was working good for about an hour anyway.

That last change I made was the boot order (HDisk then DVD) and 'voila!' I get the pretty blue screen right after I login. The message showed up as:

***hardware malfunction***
call your hardware vendor for support
NMI:channel check/IOchk
***system halted***

NOTE: I get this error right as I click on the username. This is a WinXP Home Laptop (SP2), with about 768 megs of memory.

Prior to it crashing, I had it booting fine and utilizing very minimal Mem usage, etc. So, this doesn't seem to be a resource issue. It was after changing the boot order it all started... Although the change I made is minimal at best.

Change the BIOS settings BACK to default and still, same message right after I click on the username. I would say, every other boot, the screen is just black. Yet, all the power lights are on, you can hear the drive do the initial spin, etc. Here are some details that stood out to me:

1) Mini PCI Wireless LED was not working. Yet, Device Manager shows no errors on anything (when I could get into XP Home). Press and depress the button with no LED activity.Unfortunately, there is no wireless network where I was able to test connectivity.

2) BIOS is a little bit old. But, I may go that route just to say I tried it. Yet, I think that is off tangent for this issue.

3) The Fan over the processor NEVER goes on. Could be bad... But, I hate taking laptops apart... There always seems to be extra parts after...

4) If replacing the fan doesn't fix it, I am leaning toward the LCD or MBoard as the Hardware failure... That was my initial reason for checking it out. Well, maybe the Mini PCI wireless card too, no light ever came on (pressing the wireless button)

5) The HP guy wants $700.00 to look at it and fix it, etc. You can get a more up-to-date notebook with that cash.

Anything I might have missed or overlooked? Feedback would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks for the info. I will apply those as "Next Steps"

Good information, thanks. As for Safe Mode? I did get the System Halted error like before. Difference, of course, is it happens at the protected Safe Mode screen (all the text in each corner. Sorry, only on my first cup of "joe" this AM).

I was advised this morning that, as I suggested, she waited 2 hours (until the laptop was cool to the touch, etc.) and turned it on. Whammo! It came on, NO ISSUES. But, the fan in the processor area never comes on. I have a feeling this is STILL either a "short" where the fan plugs in (MBoard) or the fan is bad (ideally).

So, here are my next steps when I go back down (next Tuesday):

1) I will take the fan out and see if it can be replaced (hopefully at Fry's). It looks like the old fans they used for 486 processors, back in the day; i.e. low priced.

2) If that does not do it, I will boot from the XP CD and run a "mock" installation. I will run a chkdsk at the console (just to be safe) and do a repair, if necessary.

This has worked pretty well for me in the past. Thanks again.

For those interested... I found out why this laptop was giving the I/O Error. Upon "ripping" this thing apart with my new handy dandy Jewel Driver / Rachet set... I found the Mini-PCI Card was "canted" out of the socket. Once reapplied and some "Jerry-Rigging" to the socket locks, it worked like a champion. Of course I had purchased the heat sync assembly / Fan ($36.00, not bad) and HP shipped it, likkity-split (very impressive). I was able to replace it and it works like a champion... And guess what? No extra screws, woohoo!!! Unfortunately, this thing never really gets hot enough to initiate the fan... oh well. Thanks for all the help.