New CPU or Boat Anchor

[Guy Fraser]

On Thu, 2006-05-01 at 21:40 -0600, Gregory P. Ennis wrote:
...snip...
> Kam,
> 
> It seems to be ventilated well...actually better than my newer PC. I
> have not reseated the memory .... that is a good idea..., but memtest86
> did not produce any errors.  I would like to make this box usable.
> 
> Greg
Have you tried resetting the BIOS to defaults?

It is possible someone tried to overclock the memory, and or the CPU
which can manifest strange problems usually with random issues, but 
can also appear to be reproducible. Power supply problems can also 
have similar effects.

You may also want to get a can of compressed air and blow all the 
dust bunnies out of the machine and its power supply, then remove 
and reinstall all the cards, modules and memory sticks. While 
performing this task you may discover, that a fan is seized or 
something was loose. You may also not discover anything wrong, 
and the problem may persist, but at least you now have clean parts 
to recycle. ;^)

By the way, I use some 300 MHz P3, Compaq Deskpros for R&D and 
testing. They work fine for that but will likely never be 
reimplemented. It is fairy easy to find small format low 
power consumption machines with a lot more processing power than 
your HP for a fairly reasonable price, and they will support newer
drives.