Question Issues with Installing OS on HP Compaq 6910p ?

[X3rpius]

My Hp compaq 6910p for some reason refuses to install ANY operating system.
For some backstory, I obtained the unit through Ebay several months ago now and in that time it has done nothing but confuse me. First off, it will not detect any media whatsoever apart from the hdd. (Even the cd drive wont play ball despite spinning up and seemingly doing something) I can get it to boot into an installer by making a bootable partition Directly on the HDD but the installer always Fails after the first setup steps, and goes into a continuous black screen with the fan ramping up an down.
(this is with windows 7 ultimate 32 bit) The bios version is F.14 and Yes I have checked and verified that the USB and media options are indeed enabled.

I am at a total loss at what could be happening. Could it have some custom Bios that locks it Down?

any help would be greatly appreciated

 

[hang-the-9]

Used laptop, could simply be bad with dead USB ports. There should be a manual boot selection screen using a function key, see if that lets you select a different boot device.

 

[X3rpius]

Used laptop, could simply be bad with dead USB ports. There should be a manual boot selection screen using a function key, see if that lets you select a different boot device.

Nope, no USB devices come up with it. Only the hard drive and a network option

 

[Phillip Corcoran]

"USB Legacy Support" is enabled in the BIOS settings ?

 

[X3rpius]

"USB Legacy Support" is enabled in the BIOS settings ?

Yes it is

 

[mbarnes86]

Hi
these HP 6910p laptops are very old the first bios update is from 2007 and the last from 2010 (F19)
My one has a sata 80GB hard disk and a PATA DVD drive and 2 GB of RAM

How much ram do you have ?
With 512Meg of ram you would have to stick to XP
you need at least 1GB for Windows Vista, 7 or 10 though that would be very slow to start up.

There is no reason why they can not run Windows 7 or 10 unless you are using some oem Win 7 from DELL, Toshiba etc with non standard drivers.
Or unless there is physical damage to RAM or hard disk

Its F10 to get into the setup/bios

unless you can set the boot order to be USB or DVD drive before the internal hard disk you will have difficulty in running diagnostics on the ram (memtest86)
If you have already removed the hard disk and connected it to another PC you can run Western Digital data life guard for windows to test the hard disk for damage.

regards

Mike Barnes

 

[X3rpius]

Hi
these HP 6910p laptops are very old the first bios update is from 2007 and the last from 2010 (F19)
My one has a sata 80GB hard disk and a PATA DVD drive and 2 GB of RAM

How much ram do you have ?
With 512Meg of ram you would have to stick to XP
you need at least 1GB for Windows Vista, 7 or 10 though that would be very slow to start up.

There is no reason why they can not run Windows 7 or 10 unless you are using some oem Win 7 from DELL, Toshiba etc with non standard drivers.
Or unless there is physical damage to RAM or hard disk

Its F10 to get into the setup/bios

unless you can set the boot order to be USB or DVD drive before the internal hard disk you will have difficulty in running diagnostics on the ram (memtest86)
If you have already removed the hard disk and connected it to another PC you can run Western Digital data life guard for windows to test the hard disk for damage.

regards

Mike Barnes

My machine is running 4gb of ram and has an aftermarket sata 500gb hdd. Everything was taken from working machines that I parted out.

 

[hang-the-9]

There are some older laptops that want a specific type of media to boot from, I had a few that would only boot from an external CD/DVD player and only if that one was of some specific brand. I had 3 different external drives, only one of them worked to boot from.

 

[X3rpius]

There are some older laptops that want a specific type of media to boot from, I had a few that would only boot from an external CD/DVD player and only if that one was of some specific brand. I had 3 different external drives, only one of them worked to boot from.

There are some older laptops that want a specific type of media to boot from, I had a few that would only boot from an external CD/DVD player and only if that one was of some specific brand. I had 3 different external drives, only one of them worked to boot from.

ok, so I tried an external DVD rw that I had and the laptop still won’t boot. It isn’t even an option in the boot menu.I also tried three different USB sticks and those didn’t work either. USB legacy support is also enabled, so why its doing this is a mystery.