I recently bought a compaq desktop 4000. It was bought from my university. It had win 95 but they deleted all software off before selling it. I had accidently put win98 refresh cd in the computer and ran the dos prompt. Soon i had realized what i did and tried to install win95. It wouldnt accept the win95 caz it said it was inappropriate or sumthin like that when i did #1 on the restore disk. so i decided to use fdisk to get the error codes off. Now my computer will not boot w/o a disk, and i can't get win95 on the computer because it keeps saying enter command interperter. If i had win98 i would install it but that is just the restore disk to the computer i am curently using to write this. Please help meeeeeeeeeee!

You're having one of those days too, I see W0rm. Take the thing back to the comp lab at "my university" and tell them of your woes. They will still laugh at you, but you will probably get some help.

[HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAAAAAAAAAHAAAAAAAAAA]
Well, W0rm's right, you're an idiot...
So is Doofus.....

In a translation of what I'm about to say:
"You're screwed, screwed, screwed, SCREWED, SSSSCCCCRRRREEEEWWWWEEEEDDDD!!!!"

Hmmmmmmmmmmmm.....blank, unformatted, nothing-on-it, nuked clean hard drive...
You'll need some DOS disks. Have fun finding some. DOS 6.22 will work fine, Win95 will overwrite all the needed files. Now you'll need a device driver for the CD-ROM, have fun finding one. Hehehehehe. And then you'll need Windows 95 of course. Have fun.
OH YEAH! I forgot something about Compaqs. They store all BIOS settings on a specially made partition of the hard disk. Hmmmm...you just nuked that clean too. Have fun restoring it. The most important area is gone...so what?

Aren't we creative?

As stumbled across in post 3, goto Compaq's website to download a system recovery disk if it's actually needed. You'll need the model number.

The utility will create a partition on the hdd where it stores system configuration info.

Uh, ya. I knew that. Honestly, sometimes you need someone to go "see, ya push that" A very hard thing to do from here. So, e-mail Bryan and talk him through it.

I have a Compaq with a similar problem - naked (formatted) hard drive and not able to install DOS 5.0 because every time I put disk 1 into drive A:, I get an error message telling me that it isn't a system disk or something (when it does have all the required files for booting). So, something is missing on the formatted C: - where on the Compaq site should I look for such a recovery utility for a ProLinea?

Enter the model of your laptop in Yahoo\Google\MSN\Altavista search. Who would have thought it?

Luna, Excite search will find it too

Personally I wouldn't own a Compaq unless someone gave me one. Even then, I would strip it for parts and SC the MB.

Here you go Lana, copy and paste the url into your browser. When / if the page opens, you'll have to enter your model number, and then select rompaqs and utilities in the operating systems popup menu.

http://www.compaq.com/support/files/desktops/us/

Thank you, Ronin. I got the file, installed it but still no go. It still won't boot without a boot disk and I still cannot load DOS. The system won't recognize the C: drive as the bootable drive, even though command.com resides on the root directory. That's probably not where Compaq wants it. Blech.

I tried emailing Compaq support - no answer so far. I hope getting this computer up and running doesn't cost much more since the unit has already cost me $25. :-)

Now you know why I don't like Compaq machines. :)

Compaq does have some sort of web board that is handy. You might consider creating an account even if it's just to look through other people's posts. You might find the answer that you're looking for in the board.

try this url

http://www7.compaq.com/forum?14@240.2aOSbhJgeIc^1@.ee7f012

It's for 386-486, but it has links to other machines as well.

What file did you download, and what's the model number of your computer?

Good luck with Compaq tech support. :)

Ronin, you are a gem. Thanks for the link!

I have a Compaq ProLinea 4/33 and the file I loaded was sp1363.exe. That is the only file I could find on the Compaq site that seemed the likely "fix".

Still no reply from Compaq Support. And I'm beginning to lean towards your dislike of Compaqs....why must everything about them be unique? :-)

IF YOU HAVE A SYSTEMS DISK BOOT TOUR COMPUTER
AND COPY THE COMMAND.COM FROM THE DISK TO C: DIRETORY. TYPE: COPY A:\COMMAND.COM C:

Thanks for the suggestion, Tim, but I already tried that and it did not work. The command.com was from DOS 5.0. The system still would not boot to the C: prompt - I just kept getting that annoying error message about the non-system disk. Blech.

try booting to the A drive, goto the c drive and type dir /a can't remember if there is anything that comes after it. If there is it would be -s -h -r for system, hidden and read only. There should be files named sys.com I think it is and msdos.sys I think, those files have to be there to boot from the C drive.

try booting to the A drive, goto the c drive and type dir /a can't remember if there is anything that comes after it. If there is it would be -s -h -r for system, hidden and read only. There should be files named sys.com I think it is and msdos.sys I think, those files have to be there to boot from the C drive.
The other file should be IO.sys