I was trying to clean up a PC for a friend. It is an Acer running Windows XP Home. At this point I don’t remember the initial problem, but here is a list of things that have happened since I started. I started with a Recovery but without the original recovery disk and that didn’t work. I used the Ultimate Boot CD because it wouldn’t boot and tried the Recovery on it. Then I tried using my own XP installation disc using serial key of the Acer. I went to activate via phone and apparently it was not a legit key. All kinds of problems started to happen. The NTLDR was missing and tried fixes for that. All along there were numerous restarts. Then I got a legit installation CD of XP Pro and tried to install it. The last message was Disk Boot Failure. So then I removed the hard drive and put it as an external drive on another computer. All files and folders looked good. So I kept it out and tried to POST. Fans came on and then a new problem, blank screen and no beeps. So I changed the PSU. Put hard drive back in. At start up there are only continuous long beeps. I removed the RAM, HD, CD ROM, and floppy. Still blank screen, no light on the keyboard as before and the long beeps.
Here are a few of my thoughts of what may have happened. The many,many restarts overheated something. Maybe the mobo is fried or is it the CPU? Perhaps the CMOS battery and can I just remove it and test it then. Or replace it with another one? I’ve never put in or remove a CPU. I know that if I do that I will need the heat sink paste correct?
I need help obviously and if you could put it in a simple form, I would appreciate it. Any thoughts before I completely give up (which I hate to do). Thanks
