Hello,

I've just had my brand new HP laptop delivered and low and behold I turned it on this morning only to find it does not work. Basically when you turn it on try to load windows but a black screen appears with the following message:


************************************************** *************
MAC FAIL:
(1) Do not Scan The Sn
(2) Travel Card Wrong
(3) MAC Vlue Wrong
Please Check It!!
************************************************** *************
Press any key to continue.... (pressing any key just results in the same error again)


I am none the wiser as to what this means, one thing I noticed is the Windows system it seems to try to load originally is Window 98. I am guessing this laptop has been incorrectly set up as my laptop is supposed to have Vista installed on it and even has the Vista stickers on it!!

Does anyone have any ideas what the problem is?

By the looks of it I am going to have to return it as it looks like some idiot has not loaded the correct software on it.

Thanks in advance guys

Heya Hamertime Welcome to PCHF

Can you eject the DVD drive and see if there is a disk in it?

The only thing I can think is maybe they left a boot disk that uses a Windows 98 environment inside the drive that it is trying to boot to.

If there is no disk in the drive, then yes, my advice would be to return it and make sure to let them know what happened.

Hope that helps!

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Looks like they forgot to erase the test partition at the factory-IF it's a brand new system...
It is a process called "tattooing", when the software build (eg. dv9040#ABU or n360.FR) and the hardware are bonded together.
It is a factory failure and should be replaced.

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