Compaq SR5710F stuck as logo screen with falling man

[mjrossman]

I was trying to fix my elderly father's Compaq SR5710F this weekend. It worked perfectly for 2 years and all of a sudden it gets stuck at the Compaq logo screen with a falling man (upside down man standing on one hand) next to the logo. There were no hardware modifications or new software installed. I tried F10, F11 but nothing worked. I replaced the CMOS battery and now it will sometimes start up to Window Vista, but the next time it gets stuck again. I searched but cannot find any reference to the falling man. Any help would be greatly appreciated.

 

[nikorr]

Try pressing F8 @ the start of the BIOS and see if it will go to the safe mode.

 

[mjrossman]

Thanks for the assistance. I disconnected and reconnected the hard drive, pulled and reinserted the RAM sticks, and the PC started up into BIOS and then Windows Vista. I ran chkdsk, AVG Antivirus, and HP's Hardware diagnostics, and everything looked 100 perfect.

The PC has been rebooting successfully several times, albeit still with the falling man, but I'm not sure what actually was wrong, or if it will start having problems again. The falling man is an upside-down stick figure doing a one-armed handstand on a red bar, if that helps.

 

[mjrossman]

Best answer selected by mjrossman.

 

[nikorr]

Good for u and thanks for the vote : )

 

[nikorr]

This topic has been closed by Nikorr.