starting a machine after disk wipe

[wparnel]

Hello, need help. just purchased a compaq tower cpu on ebay, supposed to work fine. I can't get anything on the monitor to display, no dos, no system,.nothing. not even a blinking cursor,. tower fires up fine, mouse light comes on, keyboard lights up once. then just silence. I have the factory recover disk/cd I insert it into cd rom drive, nothing. I email the person I got it from, and he says he used killdisk to wipe the hard drive.

any suggustions?

Thanks in advance.

wparnel

 

[pmonett]

You have a blank computer. You need a bootable floppy disk, and an OS to install.
Do you have any OS that you can install ? Linux, Windows or other ?

Pascal.

 

[Freestone]

I'm not familiar with Compaqs, but I would think that even with the disk wiped something should be displayed on the screen. Is there any way you can verify that the monitor is working correctly? And if it is, then I think that it's likely something worked itself loose inside the tower during shipping. I suggest posting the model of your Compaq so the readers here know what you are dealing with.

 

[wparnel]

ok, you're right. It's a Compaq 5240 tower and came with win 98 originally installed. I have the recover disk,...and also have a win me upgrade disk. the monitor is a philips svga it's older, but it works on the cpu i'm using now. I,ve tried using several boot disks, no luck. do you think I need to purchase an operating system, or monitor?

lost,
wparnel

 

[edfair]

What happened with the boot disks?

Compaqs normally give a number of blinking underline cursors in the top left, then 3 in the top right, then back to top left.
CMOS setup is [F2] or [F10] while the cursor is blinking in the top right, depending on model. And there may be more possibilities.

You might be able to find a pdf of the manual by searching on compaq technical support with google.

Ed Fair
Give the wrong symptoms, get the wrong solutions.

 

[Freestone]

Whoa, hold on before any purchase. I suspect, and Ed confirms it pretty much, that you should be seeing something on your screen when you power on. At this point, buying an operating system or monitor is unwarranted. Not much point in either if you can't get the PC to boot up.

 

[SYAR2003]

Doesn't some of theese compaq's have an extended bios that
stores extended bios data in a small portion of
the harrdisk .

If killdisk were used on it what then.....

They also keep the restore data on the harddrive, which if you fdisk/killdisk all the partitions on the disk you wont be able to use that compaq restore disks either.

 

[edfair]

They put some extended on a partition at the front. But you don't need it. And if you find you do, then you download the 2 floppies (1 manager, 1 diagnostic), run the manager and put it on, then reload your OS on whats left.

Yeah, killdisk should have wiped all partitioning off. But you should still get the minimal BIOS cursor and an OS failure message provided that the CMOS still has the HD as the boot device.

If the video is an expansion card I would be opening the case to see if the tail had unseated. Would also be trying to force a keyboard error by unpluging while power is off.
Until something shows on the screen there is no need to go further.

Ed Fair
Give the wrong symptoms, get the wrong solutions.

 

[multarnc]

Have you tried resetting the BIOS? Take out the CMOS battery, take a screwdriver and connect the + and - connections. The motherboard might also have a jumper to reset the bios. Are your harddrives spinning up when you power on the CPU?
If resetting the BIOS doesn't work, sounds like it's probably a dead bios.
Even if your CPU or RAM was bad, you would still get something from the BIOS on the screen.

 

[tinkertech]

I just replaced a dead HD on my niece's Compaq tower and upon boot up I did get a message that there was no OS. If you don't have any type of message on the screen, not even a blinking cursor, the cpu may have another problem other than a wiped harddrive. Have you try booting with any old bootable diskette? Win98, 95 or dos? Any one of them should give you a prompt upon boot up. Least of all, ask you for the date and time.

For every problem there is a solution, for every solution there is a tech behind it.

 

[multarnc]

If resetting the CMOS doesn't do it, it sounds like your RAM is bad. Try moving the RAM to different slots. Bad RAM is the only thing that can cause absolutely nothing on boot. A bad video card would do the same, but your system would still give a beep or something. If a system has bad ram, it completely halts, b/c that is the first thing that is initialized during POST from the bios. A computer will even start if the CPU is bad. You wouldn't get past POST, but you would still get an error on the screen, depending on your bios.
I would suggest having your RAM tested.

 

[kewlcoder]

hey is you monitor working in the first place, disconnec the connector cord from the Cabinet and then switch on the monitor.. if it brightens up then it works no need to change the monitor.

and yeah you get bootable disks for recovery and yeah if your Me is a original disk then it is a bootable disktry using it to boot ....before that you need to set the boot preferences in the bios.

i don't think the things are that bad .. check it out it is not that a serious problem.

it not boot disk....got to a net-cafe and then make a boot disk and then boot .

 

[Grincho]

Hello

I concur with Multarnc. Bios or Ram.

Bios
A PC will boot to dos/start up disk even without HDD present
1st though you need to open your pc and look at serial of your motherboard. then get access to net and find manual for your motherboard.

Some newer PCs come with a boot block feature that enables them to recover from a corrupted BIOS situation. If the BIOS code is whacked, a tiny built-in program will look on the floppy drive for the appropriate files to reload the BIOS. You should contact the manufacturer for instructions.
You can usually purchase a replacement BIOS chip from the motherboard (not BIOS) manufacturer. Physically replacing the chip with another that has the right code will solve the problem.


Ram. Once again motherboard book

this will contain info on your error beeps for faulty components.

Ram generally has a continuous beep.

Heres a helpful link

http://www.viaarena.com/?PageID=194