That compaq should have a rom-based setup and not depend on the separate hard drive partition. There may be (or have been) a separate non-dos partition but it would have contained diagnostic utilities. Or a second dos partition on the drive may have had restore files. Even if those partitions are gone it shouldn't affect the ability to get into setup. Neither should it prevent a successful floppy boot. If your floppy is prompting you for the date and time it's probably an older pre-windows version, unless you added those commands to autoexec.bat. I suggest you create a new win98 bootdisk and use that. If it still locks up, open the case and disconnect the hard drive(s). Then try booting. It may hang for a minute or two while it searches for the missing drive but should eventually give a message about a hardware change. If you finally get a successful boot that way then there must be a drive problem. It's possible this wipe.exe damaged the drive so more info on that file would be helpful.

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all the keyboards I have used are ps2. The wipe program I use just gets me to a prompt and i enter a:> wipe 0 then yes, then it does its job. I have used this wipe program many times before on other computers and never had encountered this problem. I also performed it on another compaq, a compaq presario 5240 and this problem never happened. I am using a dos 6.22 boot disk, and before it installs dos it asks me to put in the correct date and time, in the past i was able to press 'enter' at this point but on this time 'enter' is not being processed. If i put in the Win2000Pro setup boot disks, after disk1 is done it asks me to put in dis2 and press enter, after putting in disk2 and and pressing 'enter', 'enter' is not being processed. I think I am going to first try the Win98 boot disk. If that doesn't work I will then try what aegis said, go to compaq site and try to find the utility to restore the bios.

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The 'wipe 0' command sounds like it wiped the entire drive and not just one partition. I think it's an IBM utility. There could be a problem with the floppy bootdisk or floppy drive that is causing the boot problem. Nothing you've done should prevent booting from a floppy. Here's the download page for that model: http://h10025.www1.hp.com/ewfrf/wc/... There is no F10 setup utility (the one that installs the setup partition on the drive). Compaq is kind of sloppy about listing their downloads but when no F10 setup shows then generally it's not needed--meaning it's rom-based. No rompaq (compaq's name for a bios upgrade) downloads show either. You might also check for a 'clear cmos' jumper on the motherboard. Jump it, turn on the PC for a few seconds, turn if off and replace the jumper in the standby position. Then reboot. You should get a hardware change message and an option to enter setup.

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Here's a download for it (assuming it's the IBM utility): http://server.oersted.dtu.dk/ftp/da... if anyone else wants to take a look at it.

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i have tried other hard drives, the same thing, 'disk error, insert system disk and press return', when i press return nothing happens. When i put in the dos 6.22 boot disk, once it gets to the set date/time press return, when i press return nothing happens. I have never had a problem with a computer like this before, i always used the wipe.exe on computers before i install a new OS on it. The information that comes on the screen when you start a computer, like the bios version, master/slave drives and all that other information, usually all that info stays on the screen for 7-8 seconds, but now it just quickly appears and dissapears, then the red compaq logo, then a black screen with a blinking cursor on the top left of the screen, then the 'disk error, insert system disk and press return' screen. Keyboard input is not working. Compaq wrote me and said that the whole bios is on the ROM chip (someone told me part of the bios was on the hard drive). When i tried a different hard drive, this hard drive happened to have Win2000Pro on it, it started booting up to it, then went to the blue screen of death, with a message about the hard drive. I tried different IDE cables on the hard drive, removed the battery for a few hours.

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With no HD or wiped HD and no bootdisk then boot error is to be expected. I still think the floppy drive or 6.22 disk may be bad. I've had them hang halfway when booting. The error when booting 2K may be simply the drive being in a different computer, depending on the error message.

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if the floppy drive was bad why is it reading all the boot disks i put in? (I don't think the floppy is bad) When its time to press enter, the command is not being processed. I have used the 6.22 disk, wipe.exe disk, killdisk.exe, and setup disk for Win2000Pro disk 1, everytime that i prompted to use the keyboard to enter, the keyboard is not being recognized. The screen that shows all the bios version and other information when you start a computer is simply appearing and dissapearing in less than a second, usually this screen is show for about 7-9 seconds. What could be causing the keyboard to not be responsive when i press enter when i use one of the boot disks i use?? can i flash the bios with no operating system installed? could it be bad RAM?

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Without it sitting in front of me I can only speculate. If it skips through the posting screen too fast it may be ignoring the drive detection phase, possibly because they're set to NONE. Or maybe cmos was set to a quick post which, well, would be quicker. It could be a some undetermined hardware problem. Compaq's will often take a minute or two to post the error. During that time your KB will not respond. How long does it hang? I don't believe you posted back what happens when no hard drive is attached. You may have to reboot once or twice so the bios know there's no hard drive. And please, make a brand new windows 98 bootdisk and use it.

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I have this problem on 2 computers. One one of them the keyboard started to work, so I used the Win2000Pro boot disk, all went well, the 4 disk went through there process, and I was then asked to put in the Win2000Pro cd and press 'enter'. After 'enter' the system rebooted and then came to the screen that said 'disk boot error, insert system disk and press enter'. What the F_CK is going on? What will a Win98 bootdisk do? Will I need Win98 cd?

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98 would be better than 6.22 when fiddling with the 4 gig drive that PC probably has. It probably wouldn't help in starting a 2K installation but its utilities may show a problem with the drive as I'm not familiar with 2K. You wouldn't need the 98 cd unless you planned on installing 98. If you don't have a 98 machine running you can download a bootdisk file from a place like bootdisk.com. The boot error may mean it was trying to boot from other than the intended drive. You need to check the boot order in setup (F10) if you can get to it. Most bios', when the cdrom is first and the HD is second in the boot order, will ask which you want to boot from when a bootable cd is detected. Several compaqs I've worked on don't do that. If the cd is first it'll always boot from the cd. This causes problems doing an installation after a cd boot since subsequent boots during the installation will be from the cdrom instead of the hard drive. I don't think that's your problem but be aware of it. If the KB locking is no longer a problem, the 98 disk is probably not necessary and you can just use the 2K disks.

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On the one computer with the Win2000Pro installation that stopped after I put in the cd to finish the installation, I pulled out the hard drive, looked at the jumper setting and it was set at master (pins 5-6). I then removed that jumper setting and set it to pins 4-6 (it said on the drive that this was how the jumper was default set at). Then I started the computer and it started to finish the Win2000Pro installation that I started earlier!!! so I quickly put the W2K cd back in the cd-rom. (And also at boot up i saw that the Detecting Primary IDE Master was detected on the POST screen instead of NONE detected) Why did the hard drive not get detected when I had the jumper set at Master? Now for this computer the problem is resolved, I still have the same problem with the presario 5441, maybe I should double check its hard drived jumper setting.

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"Why did the hard drive not get detected when I had the jumper set at Master?" The master was expecting a slave and there was no slave ?

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Was it a western digital? For most of those, SINGLE--that is one drive on the cable--is no jumper. It'd be jumpered as MASTER only if there's a second drive on the cable.

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