blue screen of death - Vista

[legrandefromage]

different RAM - bluescreen

no hdd attached, Vista recovery disk running - bluescreen

no bios battery - bluescreen

Cannot access bios via 'F1/ esc to access bios' as you would normally expect

HP Recovery partition failed to start - bluescreen.

I am leaning towards a hardware fault.

 

[Neil]

different RAM - bluescreen

no hdd attached, Vista recovery disk running - bluescreen

no bios battery - bluescreen

Cannot access bios via 'F1/ esc to access bios' as you would normally expect

HP Recovery partition failed to start - bluescreen.

I am leaning towards a hardware fault.

Got a spare battery you can use for the bios?

 

[mattbrown]

also make sure all connections are sound, unplug and plug back in everything.

 

[legrandefromage]

Blaaa..... cant be bothered now. Will give it back with advice to remove HDD and buy a new computer.

 

[highlandsflyer]

also make sure all connections are sound, unplug and plug back in everything.

This is how I 'repaired' a dishwasher recently.

No idea what the origin of the problem was, but once I stripped it down and rebuilt it away it went.

Sometimes machines just want some attention.

Machines have feelings too.

 

[Raging_Bulls]

no hdd attached, Vista recovery disk running - bluescreen

...

I am leaning towards a hardware fault.

You're leaning in the right direction. If the HDD is out and it bluescreens while booting from the DVD, a system corruption is not an option anymore. That only leaves a hardware fault really.
Seeing as you already tried different RAM, it'll either be the CPU, motherboard or graphics card.

Depending on which part is broken, you might be able to repair it. However if the PC is more than 4 years old, I wouldn't bother with it anymore. With old PCs you'll only run from one problem to the next.

 

[ajm]

HP Recovery partition failed to start - bluescreen.

Ah, there's your problem - it's an HP (I'm guessing laptop rather than desktop?)

My general plan of attack would be to boot off a linux live CD, check the machine runs OK; inspect the drive's SMART values which normally tell you if the drive is iffy.

In this case I'd have guessed bad RAM, if known good RAM doesn't help then it's likely to be a motherboard fault. HP laptops do like to cook themselves to an early grave though.