OK, a friend gave this to me, so no worries. it's a Celeron M 1.5ghz box, 256mb RAM (2 slots, one empty), no wifi card (has a miniPCI slot, I checked), 40gb hard drive, 15" screen, and, judging from the sticker, windows XP. When I hit the power key, I get a flashing amber light, but no boot. I get a different flash when there is no battery in it. There is a reset button on the bottom, and I have hit it a couple times, no change.
any help? I came across a yahoo answers post, but it was closed, with no relivant answer. Shame, as the guy had the exact same problem. it's a nice piece of kit, has a Altec Lansing sound system, intel graphics, but it should run linux with no trouble. it has 2 PC card slots, and I have a spare linksys wifi card from a failed experiment, so that will go in there in a minute.
thanks.
-digital 
Any signs of dropping?
Have you reseated the RAM and checked if the CPu is soldered down or in a socket. If it's in a socket, is it fully seated. It ought to show SOME sign of life unless the RAM or CPU is out of place, or if the mobo is dead. Does it have a seperate DC board, and if so check the voltage it's putting out.
I havnt had a chance to open up yet, I guess I will have to now, even though i dont want to. I removed the access panels, and checked if it had the wireless card, and popped the ram dor, and reseated it. I'll check the other bits later.
as for it being dropped, dunno. it does have some signs of wear already, like on the cornders, and main trackpad button, there is some of the faux silver paint coming off.
if I cant get it running, no big deal. i'll hawk the hard drive and stick it in my mother's toshiba, which need s a new one.
any other ideas?
-digital
Someone here at the office had an HP some-crazy-model-number notebook that exhibited similar symptoms. In that case the person knew what had happened: it apparently crashed in the middle of a flash BIOS update.
I don't know if that's what you're seeing but if so good luck. In this case the person tracked down some support forum threads implying it was possible to recover the system using a specially crafted disk to reflash the BIOS, but we never were able to get it to work. It *may* of been because we were trying to use a "generic" USB floppy drive instead of a specific HP one (which the user didn't have), but I have my doubts.
--Peace
There are certain models of USB floppy drive that work (and are certified for) out in DOS or Windows text mode. I have to use a specific USB floppy drive when I need to install RAID drivers for a new Windows installation on a server without a built-in floppy.
*shrug* I used one Dell sells for use with their laptops. I've used the same drive to boot a Rackables-brand 1U server, and Linux, Solaris, and FreeBSD identify it as a bog-standard USB floppy, so it seemed like a fair enough drive to use. A "proper" USB Mass Storage Class device should "just work" unless your BIOS expects something *other* then a generic device.
(Perhaps there are still floppy drives in circulation that don't adhere to the standard, and you've had problems with those in your Windows installs. A lot of early ones didn't.)
God knows what HP's BIOS expects, of course, particularly the brain-damaged recovery mode stub. It might of been looking for a specific vendor ID code. Or it might of just been screwed up beyond repair. What little I could discover by digging suggested their recovery mode wasn't very robust.
In my mind the real lesson to be drawn from the affair is that the *last* thing you should ever do when your machine is acting flakey is try updating the BIOS, particularly from Windows. Something else is wrong, fix that first.
--Peace
I dont think it was a failed BIOs update. i'll ask him what his mother was doing the minute it died. running apps, processes, and whatever else. I need to collect as much data as possible before I deflower it by opening it and breaking it even worse. Just wanted to get some feeler info to see if anyone else had a simmilar issue. This is an end user, one who probibly doesnt even know what a BIOS is. They dont care how it works, so long as it does.
-digital
or in this case, the flash code. It's got to be on the net. It could be that the CPU konked out on ya. it's much like beeps on a computer telling you that there is no RAM or something. if the CPU Board was disconnected, i doubt it would give you code at all since it requires a CPU to power the machine to begin with (this is where A+ kicks in). if you can get to it, there are lines for the CPU that need power to boot, if you can find where to check this, and there is no power to it, that might be the problem.
it would include a meter and some troubleshooting, but you could find the exact problem through that. You also might want to check the power supply (try the first non-destructive measures first) and see if the power is good. I also would say the first thing to check when getting in, is to see if there is a power board, and check the voltage across it from the wires going to the logic board.
yeah, I am starting to think it's a loose CPU. I tried taking it apart, but after remving all the screws off the bottom and back, it was still holding together for some reason. there were 2 screws on the front edge that didnt come out, but were loose, and the bit they were holding hinged out some, but still nothing.
also, no beep codes, it just blinks an amber LED at me. there are three of them, one for the hard drive, one for power (marked I/O), and one for I think charging, with a lightning bolt. that is the one blinking at me, the one with the lightning bolt.
any thoughts?
-digital
Just wasted 1/2 an hour of my life talking to a live chat person; Told me nothing new, except the power dranage procedure. simmilar to the one on some powerbooks. below is a complete transcript of the chat log. btw, it's a ze4911us, not ze4900. Why the hell cant they come up with some good model names for these things?
chat log (warning: LONG):
any thoughts?
-digital
Not helpful to the original poster but may help others.
USB floppy drives definitely exhibit different properties. A colleague was trying to install mass storage drivers from a Sony-branded USB floppy drive during a Windows XP installation on a laptop with a generic Compal motherboard. The installation failed, so my colleague contacted the OEM who kindly shipped a USB floppy drive that they guaranteed would work. It was a Sony drive with the same model number as the one that failed, but the second drive did work.
Turns out a transistor on the board had been fried by a malfunctioning power supply. currently looking for replacement pieces.
Transistor code was ERF4R.
There are two of these, and the main one that regulates power to startup sections of the board was blown clear open. The secondary which regulates the warning system such as post alert light (power led on front of laptop that flashes to indicate damage to a critical component of the mobo.)
Sadly I need a new one, and hopefully I can fix mine. Hope this helps you a bit. Becareful what you use for power supplies. Even HP doesn't guarantee their tech against causing this damage.