Hi guys, I know this is late but it is by chance that i stumbled upon this forum. Code purple will only happen to ODM computers and as far as i know, HP and Compaq are one of those that may have this error. It means that the motherboard is not tattooed properly, or not tattooed at all or it simply means that it's faulty.
As you know, commercial PCs always come with a quick restore CD or recovery partition and companies use a tattoo on the motherboard to make it unique so that the quick restore cd will only run on it's assigned PC. Like a every lock has its unique key. So the tattoo is the motherboard's unique code.