Hello everyone! So I saw this machine, fell in love with it, and bought it. But it doesn't work. It won't boot hard drive or floppy. Floppy: It gives me that error when you have a nonbootable disk in the drive at boot-up (Non-system disk or system disk error, or whatever that is) I tried both 1.44MB and 720KB, setting the BIOS to both those formats, nothing works. Hard drive: The drive says on the label, Type 2. The BIOS' Type 2 matches the characteristics on the drive's label, so I guessed that was right. No. I get: 1790-Disk 0 error The drive's OK as my external USB enclosure reads it fine. Any ideas of why these 2 problems might be occurring? Thanks! -- Leo

What is the model # of the hard drive? Type 2 is typically only 20 meg which I belive is much smaller than what originally came with that laptop.

Yes, it's a 1GB Quantum 1080AT. Please don't tell me I have to buy a 20-meg hard drive. :-/ -- Leo

Wow, if I had known the actual model was 'Fireball', I wouldn't have even tried it on my other PC in the first place; I'd just have assumed it was fried since I've had 2 of these drives burned. Sure, the name fits them well. xD -- Leo

Isn't the Compaq LTE 25 a 386 laptop? Or are we talking about a different computer? A 386 bios isn't going to recognize a 1 gig drive. Also, isn't that hard drive a 3.5" drive that won't fit in a laptop? But if I'm wrong and you've got a 1 gig HD and a 386 laptop you'll need to install a drive overlay on it. First you need to get the bios to accept that a drive is connected. Try the various drive types until you don't get the 1790 disk error. Once that's done you'll need to download a bios overlay from Maxtor. You'll need to boot up with a bootdisk and install the overlay. The overlay will give you access to the full 1 gig even though the bios won't see it. If it's not booting from the floppy drive make sure a: is the first boot device in cmos/bios setup. (There may be no option to change the boot order in a bios that old. If so then the floppy drive is already the first boot drive.) Make sure the floppy drive is set to 1.44. Make sure you're using a good bootdisk. If all that checks out and it still won't boot then the floppy drive must be bad.

You most probably have a dead CMOS battery. My old LTE/25 won't boot anymore, but if I go down to Radio Shack and get a new CMOS battery, it'll boot right back up. This battery powers the internal clock and BIOS settings while the notebook is off. It also supplies the initial juice to start the power up sequence. So, if the laptop hasn't been used for some time, this is the most likely culprit.