>1. What could be causing the 'stall'? I suspect the CMOS battery!!

Chances are it is not the CMOS battery.  I have never seen a case where a
battery failing has anything to do with the computer crashing (Not booting
because of bad settings I have seen.)  The battery would either be good or
bad.  If it bad you would get an error on boot to manually enter the CMOS
settings.

I would thing bad RAM as a possibility.  Try swapping it with some good RAM
out before you do the formatting.

>
>2. If I format his disk will I then see a more familiar boot up screen or is
>HP using a special bios? if they are using a special bios how do I enter it?

HP does use a special bios.  You can never get rid of the blue screen.  To
enter the BIOS it is either Delete or F1 (I am thinking more towards F1.)

-Rob


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