Could be a number of things... the mboard is a possibility.
It could also be the power supply or even a bad mem chip.
You're on borrowed time with it. It could go away
permanently any time.

HPs are generally pretty reliable from my experience. Sounds
like it might have been abused before you got it.

"Simple Simon" wrote in message
...


It's a hard life for any computer aboard a vessel in salt water.

I love my HP pavilion. It is a great computer except it has
a bad mother board or temp sensor or something that makes
the hard drive not 'seen' by the computer about half the time.

It started about two weeks ago. It boots up normally about
fifty percent of the time and runs and never crashes but about
half the other times it refuses to boot and only shows a BIOS
screen that asks which boot device to use. When the hard
drive is chosen and enter is hit it just goes back to the same
old BIOS screen asking which boot device to use.

Then when left for a couple hours or over night it boots up normally
or not. depending oh how it feels. It's weird! I'm not an expert but
I'm convinced the motherboard is bad or a socket is not making
a decent connection depending on temp and humidity. HP will
fix it for free because it is still in warranty and I have the receipt
and have scanned it and sent it to them in a giant tif file that they
can examine with a magnifier till they are satisfied. I think what
is bugging them is I bought it from Circuit City as an out of the
box unit that somebody else returned but the receipt says it
carries the full year warranty nonetheless.

S.Simon