I've formatted the C drive on my (old) Compaq Presario 7210 but also accidently Formatted my BIOS & Recovery info wich was on a (apparently) hidden seperate 4mb Partition. At that point it could still boot my win 98 setup diskette so I could *sys c:* and copy the command.com and acces the C:\ normally. When I restarted it wouldn't read my A:\ anymore (invalid drive spec.), so I couldn't "Startup with cd support" from the win 98 setup diskette to re-install win 98. My BIOS must still be there but i think the computer just doesn't recogdnise it anymore. I tryd looking for the BIOS battery but couldn't find it on my motherboard. I figured it might be possible manualy set the A: as primary boot device in DOS but I dont't know how. Anyway my main objective is to boot from A: again. I think this will be quite an expert challenge, G00d Luck and Thanks very much.

You're screwed. Once the BIOS goes the only thing you can do is replace the BIOS or get another mboard. I would get another opinion just to be sure.

you can try pressing F10 right after post it might get you into bios, all comps use different key to enter the bios. likey the recovery files are still on the hard drive unless you formated more than the c:drive. you can try manufacture web site for the correct way to get into the bios.

Get the book out and read how to clear the Bios. It is simply a case of moving a jumper for a couple of seconds and the replacing it .

Format doesn't remove partitions - fdisk does. You can try Compaq Support for the setup program for your machine.

You can clear the bios using DEBUG. Do a search on google. I've done it before & it worked like a charm, but can't remember the routine. Written down here somewhere though.