Duron CPUs may be damaged if powered up without a heatsink. It's a shame no one told you this.
Sorry to read about your loss.
Bob
Hi,
My laptop stopped booting recently, it just starts beeping loudly and eventually gets to the 'Windows Failed to startup' screen and no choice will make it boot. The beeping suggested a h/ware problem to me so I got memtest86 and it showed multiple failures. I posted on the board and people suggested the RAM solder points might be physically broken so I dismantled the laptop to get a look at the RAM chips. They appeared fine. While re-assembling the laptop I tried booting up as I added each part back in. There was no beeping until I put back a metal plate that sits above the CPU and below the keyboard. This plate is held in place by four screws. If I don't tighten them, when I switch on the fan spins at top speed and then after a few seconds the machine switches itself off. If I do screw these down then the fan spins at a slower rate and the machine starts the high pitched beeping. Looking at the underside of the metal plate there is a piece of plastic which makes direct contact with the CPU, the plastic looks a bit deformed (melted I would guess). So it seems likely now that the RAM may not be the problem but rather it is an overheating CPU as I have heard this can cause loud beeping also. So, does anyone know if this is likely the cause, if so what can I do to fix it given that the fan appears to be fully functional? Note that there is also a smaller fan in the top right hand corner of the laptop immediately below the CD/DVD drive, this fan shows no activity at startup could this be the problem ?
My machine is :
Compaq Presario 721UK, it has a 1.1 GHz Duron processor, 128Mb RAM, a 20 Gig hard drive and is running Windows XP home edition

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