found a very old PC in my parents garage while i was cleaning it for them
Its about 5-7 years old near as i can figure and was a mid range every day computer back then
It was bought as a pre-built machine (1 of 5) for an internet cafe
it is an HP Pavilion a1020n



It will turn on i can hear the HDD and all the fans spin, and it begins to sound like its starting up
then it sounds like its shutting down or restarting
nothing comes through on my monitor
can anyone think of a place for me to start with this thing lol

lol it was well taken care of, nothing got damp

i managed to get it to the bios
without a windows disc in it will not boot windows, just continuously restarts after bios
i put a windows XP disc in and it comes up with the message
"windows could not start because the following file is missing or corrupt
<windows root>\system32\hal.dll
Please re-install a copy of the above file."

i dont care about recovering anything thats on it, i would be fine to just do a wipe and fresh install but if i cant even get a windows disc to boot im stumped

Would the battery be causing this issue?
I planned on getting a new battery eventually anyways however wasn't going to run out and get one any time soon.
But if that is likely what's causing the problem I'll grab one tomorrow.

Sounds to me like you need to change the boot order in the bios to cdrom as first boot.

Immediately on startup continually tap F2 and this will take you into the bios.

Look for the section called Boot and go into that.

The list may look like this...
Hard drive
Cdrom drive
Floppy

The cdrom needs to be at the top of the list so use the up/down arrows or +/- to alter the setting and at the same time put the XP disk in the drive.

Then press F10 to save the setting and exit the bios.

The screen should go dark and the message "Press any key to boot from cd" should appear.

You will see this message again on subsequent reboots.....PRESS NOTHING but simply let it continue installing.

I think he said this earlier Sam....

Lol changing my boot order was the first thing I tried.
Without a disc in it will not boot at all, with the disc in it gives that message

Would it be a corrupt HDD, bad bios battery, bad mobo, bad CPU?

I don't really care what's wrong with it I just want to know what I need to replace to get it running again
So again any help is appreciated here guys what would cause that message and what do I need to replace to just to a fresh install of xp

replaced the battery
now i get the same message
"windows could not start because the following file is missing or corrupt
<windows root>\system32\hal.dll
Please re-install a copy of the above file."
with or without a windows disc in it
not sure if the battery changed that or if it had nothing to do with it, but im down $10 for a new battery and no better off
whats wrong with this machine guys?

ok so how do i do that?
and if i cant do that what part do i need to replace?
is it a mobo issue?

i installed a copy of windows 7 on a spare HDD i had and put it in the old PC
even though it doesnt have the specs to run 7 well i figured it would atleast tell me what was wrong
the PC boots up to a screen that says
"BOOTMGR is missing
Press Ctrl+Alt+Del to restart"

so whats going on, that means a mobo issue right?
the only thing i have left to try is to un-install the DVD drive from my main PC and try it in this old one to try and boot from an XP disc and im really not wanting to do that

fixed it myself
thanx for trying i suppose?

just so you guys know....
made a bootable flash with XP on it, wiped old drive, re-installed XP
took 3 wipes and installs to get it right due to some weird partitions but its a working PC again