Cannot Install windows on old hp pavilion

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barret88

Geek Trainee
I am in need of some help here... I have an old HP Pavilion XE738 and am trying to install windows98 on. It originally had windows XP and I'm using a new harddrive. When I start up the comp. it shows the Hp Pavilion blue screen as usual, but afterwards I get a black screen... I wait about 10mins and then I see a few dis-colored lines on the screen. Small and a few. I have tried 2 different monitors and they are plugged into the onboard video. No video card is plugged in. I tried unplugging everything 1 by 1 to see if the problem got solved, even the harddrive, but still got nothing. The ram is good. I've tried resetting the bios and changing the cmos battery, still no help. Any help would be great. Thanks.
 
have u actually finished installing windows on it, if so, boot up from the installation cd, and either try reinstalling windows, first formating the HDD, or try and do a windows repair from the bootable windows installation cd if you havent tryed them.
first try those methods.
 
I had windowsXP installed in it originally, but took out the harddrive and it's being use on another system.I can't startup from cd or anythig. I just get to a black screen. It doesn't read the floppy or cd rom drive when starting up, it just goes to that black screen.
 
go into your bios, and change you boot devide priority, so your first boot device is your cd rom, its usually del you have to press at that blue hp screen you said, or it could be f1, or f2 i think.
 
ok, I tried pushing f1, f2, del, and f8 and during the blue hp screen I get a tthe bottom starting setup... then it goes back to the same black screen as before. And I notice that is doens't even load the floppy or cd rom. It just goes to hp blue screen then the same black one. Could the mobo. be dead?
 
no, you need to get into your motherboard bios, to change the boot device priority as i said, then when you have set your cd rom to your first boot device, try to boot the windows 98se setup disk, and it should boot up, unless you have a problem like mine, were i have a dvd rom and it has stoped reading cd roms, so i cant boot up windows disks cos there all cd rom, but you dont have a dvd rom do you, so try what i said, if necessery on that blue hp screen, try every button on your keyboard, hmm, try f5 first.
 
I understand that I have to change the bios settings.. I just kept trying to restart the comp. and press all the buttons, including f5, I get "entering setup" at the bottm, then back to the same black screen. windows cds aren't doing anything either. And its just a standard cd rom drive, not a dvd drive.
 
oh, it aint suposed ot do anything, cos your cd rom aint set so it boots first, ah so you cant get into bios, i am lost now :s, you will have to wait untill one of the experts can help you, hmm, i tried my best :\, but i aint an expert, i am learning :)
 
Thanks for help will, but I found a solution by reading a post by Exfoliate. I left the battery out overnight and it worked.
 
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