I have a Compaq deskpro 2600 computer. I'm running PI 166 with 128 megs ram. Here's my tale of wo: I tried to fromat the hard drive with fdisk without knowing what I was doing. (bad move.) When I tried to reboot I get a "non system disk or disk error" message. When I try to get sytem to boot from w/95 boot disk, I just get the same disk error repeated. I emailed compaq support and he felt the problem was their (compaq's) setup information was lost when I errantly formatted the hard drive. I tried downloading the file from the internet and transfer onto to a floppy, but the floppy won't load when I boot. I tried a different formatted hard drive and when I try to boot I get a floppy drive error: "error reading drive A, abort, retry, fail?" I believe what I need is a Compaq recovery disk with the information the bios chip is looking for. Anyone have any idea where I can get one or how else I can get around this problem. I'm reasonably sure hardware is ok. I also tried to load recovery disk from another HP system that I have and it gets as far as "loading Windows 95 and then realizes it is not an HP computer and aborts the installation. But that cd has something on it that the bios reads and enables the cd to run. any suggestions would be greatly appreciated.

In a situation such as you face, it's probably a good idea to look at the various sides of the solution. If your time, energy and aggravation is absolutely free and you have plenty of each to give, then by all means, continue on your merry way. If, however, you have a mediocre threshold of pain (as a lot of us) and at least a few dollars in your pocket, Fire Up the Plastic! Replace the bloody thing. The course of getting that machine back to a useable state will cause headache, heartache, walletache, wifes bellache, heartburn and a lot of other stuff. And when you finally get it working with win95, you'll have a seven year old machine that has cost you as much as a new one would... Have a good day

The F10 bios restore can be found here; http://www.compaq.com/support/files/deskpro/us/download/234.html But I guess this is what you have already tried to do and came up short. What about putting your hard drive in another computer and copying the system files needed to make it bootable. Is this even an option for you? If it is you could copy all the OS files needed into a folder, then start the installation after you get the drive back into the compaq. good luck

A Compac with a bad floppy? Sounds familiar to me hahaha...Been there done that . Had a Presario 200mgz "floppy won't work" Loaded win 98 alright and Linux no problem ... cause my kid tru the recovery disk away. Try getting someone to burn the system files on to a cd rom maybe they'll load from there.

You don't need special Compaq software to install Win 95 or 98, or even XP (I use an old Compaq as a test machine). I have a hunch that when you used fdisk you did not mark the partition on the drive 'active' (hence the 'non-system disk' error). This would stop you from installing the OS. BTW, running fdisk has nothing to do with BIOS. Compaq tech support really sucks! Run fdisk again and make sure you do a complete job and you should be OK. Regards.

Fdisk, make partitian active & then format the drive. You have to format after running fdisk. I have 2 compaqs pc's & have done this before & reinstalled Windows 95 with ease. I actually like compaq. Has never given me any problems, then again, I might be just lucky.

Guys, thanks very much for your input. The idea of rerunning fdisk and reformatting seems to make the most sense. The questions I have are: how do I do this when I can't get past the "disk error" problem? Is the dos file still on my hard drive? If it is, how do get to it?