Compaq Presario won't boot-up

[floydman80]

Compaq Presario 9548 - following occurs:
turn machine on
hear some noise from acceesory being accessed for about 6-9 seconds, then nothing
Cd rom light will light
one green light briefly lights then goes out
floppy is never accessed (puttting boot disk in never gets recognized)
place a CD in, and it will rotate slightly
nothing on monitor - jet black

So - do I shi* can it or try to get a hard drive

Motherboard can get unseated somewhat when putting plugs in in the back - noticed this when I took case apart - but in seating it - no improvement.

any guesses?

 

[osuman]

It doesn't sound like a hard drive problem. When did it start doing this? Was it all of a sudden or did you acquire it in this condition?

 

[floydman80]

We got it in this condition - someone gave it to my son - I'm trying to get it to work for him. Previous owner said they used it a month ago. I think that's suspect - why would the kids parents approve of her giving it away. So I think they knew something -my guess is that it is old enough and some friend said just buy a new computer becasue of the prices - I don't disagree - but if it's salvageable - I get my kid off my machnine. So I am motivated - to an extent.

 

[edfair]

Sounds like bios, memory, or processor problem. Would try reseating memory and processor for start. Reseat the memory several times.
Noise is the HD spinning up and indexing. CD normally lights on power up while it resets. Ed Fair
efair@atlnet.com

Any advice I give is my best judgement based on my interpretation of the facts you supply.

Help increase my knowledge by providing some feedback, good or bad, on any advice I have given.

 

[floydman80]

Edfair - you are the man. I didn't think reseating the memory etc. would be the issue, but I thought more about the ease of how the motherboard would unseat. Found a black clip that locks the boad in - Presto - now I'm almost booting. Got through the memory check.
However - now I get this message
"Invalid system disk"
"Replace the disk and hit any key to continue"
What's next?

 

[edfair]

Means that it can't find an operating system on the hard drive. You need a bootable floppy, dos with cd support, 95 with cd support, or preferably 98 since it has 95% probablility of working. From boot disk, sys c: will put an operating system on the drive. You also may want to look at the hard drive with fdisk to see what you have.
Normally will boot with 98 floppy , ask for cd support, move to the cd, and setup. Setup will then do whatever is needed to load the system. Ed Fair
efair@atlnet.com

Any advice I give is my best judgement based on my interpretation of the facts you supply.

Help increase my knowledge by providing some feedback, good or bad, on any advice I have given.

 

[tlcscousin]

Just watch that you dont completely wipe out the drive, as Compaq used(dont know if they still do) to put the BIOS on the hard drive.
I think a search of Compaq's site might find a copy of the BIOS just in case.
Possibly check in the BIOS to make sure the IDE ports are turned on.

 

[edfair]

Think it would give missing system disk if the HDC was off.
You could also try the [F10] key on bootup. This is compaq's diagnostic program that is the first partition mentioned above, which I also had forgotten about.
If you have the diagnostic, then one choice is to generate floppies, which is one thing I would suggest.
The partition you will be working with should be marked fat16 or fat32, depending on what was previously loaded and should be marked as active.
And it is possible that the boot record is corrupted. FDISK /mbr will write a new one without corrupting the partition table.
Ed Fair
efair@atlnet.com

Any advice I give is my best judgement based on my interpretation of the facts you supply.

Help increase my knowledge by providing some feedback, good or bad, on any advice I have given.

 

[floydman80]

Well thanks for all the help - I reinstalled windows - deleted everything, defragged and reinstaling. Case closed.

 

[Guest_imported]

I need a startup disk for compaq to enter in bios. From where I can download this files?
Or how I can enter in Bios?
You can send this files to scott@go.ro.

 

[edfair]

If you want a diagnostic disk set, which is what you need to maintain the diagnostic partition, you can download from Compaq web site.
If you want to get into setup, some machines use the [F10] while the cursor is in the upper right corner. Ed Fair
efair@atlnet.com

Any advice I give is my best judgement based on my interpretation of the facts you supply.

Help increase my knowledge by providing some feedback, good or bad, on any advice I have given.

 

[Guest_imported]

I was getting the same "Invalid system disk", checked the memory, etc. Tried to fdisk, says there are no drives attached to it. Tried to install windows 2000, says that it can't find the hard drive. Is the hard drive bad?

thanks

 

[Guest_imported]

I was getting the same "Invalid system disk", checked the memory, etc. Tried to fdisk, says there are no drives attached to it. Tried to install windows 2000, says that it can't find the hard drive. Is the hard drive bad?

thanks