HP Pavilion a000 not booting up

[mcseguy9]

A friend of mine has an HP Pavilion a000 and when you turn it on you get nothing but the fact that the power is on and the fans are working. The hard drive doesn't spin, you get nothing on video and there are no beep codes. I tried swapping memory and that didn't work. I tried installing a different video card and that didn't work. I tried resetting the BIOS using the mobo jumper and that didn't work. I even removed all memory sticks and turned it on and I didn't get any beep codes. It seems fried to me. What do you think?

[jseidel]

It seems fried to me.

Yep, "it" being the motherboard. HP motherboards are proprietary so you need to contact them for a replacement.
J.

[mcseguy9]

That's what I was afraid of. It literally just went out of warranty so sucks for them. The HP cases are kind of proprietary, aren't they? IOW, if I got a new mobo it likely wouldn't work in the case, right?

[jseidel]

Yes, an off the shelf mobo may not fit. Also, most HP motherboards have what is called a "tattoo" on the BIOS chip that identifies the motherboard to the OEM Windows operating system that came pre-installed on the machine. When Windows boots and does not see the tattoo it will recognize it is installed on a new machine and may not function. OEM Windows installs cannot be transferred to another machine and for MS EULA purposes a new motherboard is a new machine for an OEM version.