compaq bios

[gore]

Originally posted here by .:front2back:.
And if you carn't fix it then you just earned yourself one expensive Paper Weight

If you throw that thing out because of that send it here! Good Lord, if it's because the HD had the BIOS on it I could at least use it for parts or something. Wasteful people.

[nihil]

I tried booting to windows installation cd and got an error that file i386/bios (something to that effect....unfortunately I didn't write the exact file name down.) could not be found.

Well if you are getting a message in that situation I would say that you must have a BIOS somewhere, as it has detected your VDU, and CD drive. I am assuming that this message does not happen if you try to boot without the CD?

Have you tried powering up and keep hitting the F-10 command key...............that should get you into BIOS setup.

When you just power it up do you get any "beeps"...........if so, how many?

Go to the link that MSM gave you and get the "emergency recovery diskette" program. That should let you make a bootable floppy.............try booting it with that.

Try looking on the Compaq site for a diagnostics diskette/program as well. Try booting with that as well.

Please let me know what happens when you try those suggestions.

[helplesslyhopin]

Faqt, If you want pretty decent help for compaq's go over to The Compaq Zone and "talk" to a guy named Toby B.

On his main page, you'll see a link for the listing of released softpaqs. I do believe you'll find a softpaq that will recreate your lost bios partition. If you don't see it listed you might still find it at either compaq's or HP's ftp sites.. Here is a thread that will give you more info and tips on finding rompaqs not listed in Toby's LORS pages. Also, if you don't see Toby hanging around much at his site, you might also locate him at motherboards.org's forum..

If you still seem to be getting nowhere, shoot me a pm and I'll do some digging for you..

good luck..