Xpirate
04-06-2009, 05:14 PM
About a week ago, my wife's aunt's Compaq computer died. I tried to repair it with a newer power supply, but it still would not power on. So I got her one of those Intel Atom mini-ITX boards and a two GB DDR2 RAM module to get her back in business.
The power supply passed the paper clip test (short the green wire with a black one) and the voltages produced were all correct. But that PS would not power the Atom motherboard, so I gave her my old PS. They let me keep the old broken hardware. There's probably something flaky about that PS. The pinout was the same as most power supplies except the white wire was missing.
Here's the real problem I ran into: The Compaq Windows XP installation would not even boot. I was able to install XP pro on the hard drive to get her back to computing, but now it comes up with a menu to boot from XP pro or the old Compaq XP home. Do any of you guys know how to get rid of that menu?
Dealing with her machine inspired me to buy some better hardware. I got a Quad Core Intel chip and all the other good things to accompany it.
The power supply passed the paper clip test (short the green wire with a black one) and the voltages produced were all correct. But that PS would not power the Atom motherboard, so I gave her my old PS. They let me keep the old broken hardware. There's probably something flaky about that PS. The pinout was the same as most power supplies except the white wire was missing.
Here's the real problem I ran into: The Compaq Windows XP installation would not even boot. I was able to install XP pro on the hard drive to get her back to computing, but now it comes up with a menu to boot from XP pro or the old Compaq XP home. Do any of you guys know how to get rid of that menu?
Dealing with her machine inspired me to buy some better hardware. I got a Quad Core Intel chip and all the other good things to accompany it.