I just bought a refurbished HP Compaq DC5850 with Windows 7 Professional. It seems to run okay for word processing and online, but is continually crashing after just a few minutes of TS2. I finally managed to locate the graphics card information, which says it has an ATI Radeon 3100. Double Deluxe specifies ATI Radeon 8500 or higher, so am I right in assuming that a 3100 is a lower grade card and does not meet the specs? (That seems logical, but I never know if regular logic applies to computers!)

Some of the BSoD error codes have been d1, fe, and 34. I also had a 5-beep error (I think it was five, but I didn't know at the time that the number of beeps was a code, and of course it hasn't done it since!), and other times it just bluescreens without explanation.

If the problem is just a low-end graphics card, I'll get a new one, but I don't want to open it up unless I'm sure, in case the machine is actually faulty and I invalidate the warranty.

5 beeps is usually a cpu error. Can you post more precise details on what you have? Go to the start menu, click the "Run..." button and type "dxdiag" into the dialog box and hit "Ok".

A DirectX Diagnostic Tool window should appear. There's a "Save All Information..." button in the bottom right corner. Click that. It will save your system info into a text file and ask you where to save that text file. Save it wherever you want, usually somewhere easy to find and then upload it here so that I can take a look at it.

Thanks, Ajaxsirius.

I think I've attached that file -- it didn't like the SWF uploader, but the old uploader seems to have worked.

Sorry but I don't know You should probably return it if you're having errors. The BSOD is too generic for me to tell, and both the CPU and GPU are old so it could be any sort of problem.

HP Compaq? Dude! HP killed off the Compaq line like 13 years ago after they merged...how much did you pay for that doorstop? Wordprocessing may be all it is capable of at this time. That it can still boot up is a testament on how they don't make computers as they used to these days.

The http://cpubenchmark.net/cpu.php?cpu...re+5400B&id=110 first appeared in the charts back in 2009!

Did the seller offer a 30-day or 2-weeks (at least) personal warranty for returns and such? If they accept it, I'd asked for money back...

Thank you! Sounds as though it's not a single simple issue, so I'm going to return it. Just didn't want to take it back, only to find it was something as simple as the graphics card.

Ellacharmed -- about $180 Canadian, I think. It was supposed to be refurbished, and from The Source, which is supposedly a reputable national electronics firm, so I thought they would have fixed up it to actually work! Had it with a Dell P2213 monitor (also refurbished) that was certainly causing some of the problems; I switched to an old Philips monitor that takes up practically the entire desk and I'm getting fewer crashes now, but still more than is acceptable. The last one said something about a driver trying to corrupt the system, but I doubt that's the sum of the problem.

They offer a 30-day return, so I'm taking it and the monitor back.