Hi there, we just bought a used compaq lte286 from a garage sale, and when it starts up it says 2688 kb ok, then I get a 1790 disk 0 error in () says resume =F1 key So I hit F1, then I get a non system disk or disk error message. Replace and strike any key when ready. This is without a disk in the drive. If I put a disk in the drive, it says invalid system disk, replace disk and press any key. We have no idea what is installed on this computer, but we cannot get to any prompts to type anything in. Please help us!! Thank you.

It really sounds like your hard drive (c:) is either bad or improperly connected. You *could* open it up and make sure that all the circuit cards are snug as well as the wide cable to the hard drive. The coloured part of that cable connects to 'pin 1' on the hard disk. Without the hard drive functioning, the computer cannot really get going without a 'boot disk', and maybe some configuration changes as well. Still, it's only a 286, probably at *least* 10 years old, the best you could hope to have on it would be DOS with Win 3.1 or 3.11. It does seem to have a bit more memory on it than most 286's. Hope you didn't pay too much for it, it really is obsolete [sorry]

1790 is a BIOS error. Your BIOS backup battery has probably died and the info about the drives has been lost. When you power the laptop up, it can't bootup because it has no CMOS data. You need to run BIOS setup and set the floppy disk type and the hard disk type, save the data and reboot. You may also need to replace the BIOS battery. You'll need the Compaq diskette to run the BIOS setup. Compaq calls this the "Computer Setup and Diagnostics for Portables" go this this link: http://www.compaq.com/support/files/notebooks/us/index.html Under the "Family" menu, choose the LTE Lite Series then enter the correct model for your computer and click the "go" button. You'll see a page where all the software for your computer can be downloaded along with reference materials. Remember, your disk drive is likely to be a 720k Double Density drive, not today's 1.44 high density drives.

It could be BIOS or mechanical failure/fault, the battery may or may not be good (they can last a long time). From compaq.com errors page: 1790 - Disk 0 Failure None Hard drive or wrong drive type Run the Configuration and Diagnostics Utilities. Excellent point concerning the FDD tho' Preston 720's were pretty common back then.

Here is the support site: http://www.compaq.com/support/portables/out_of_production/LTE286.shtml You were right Preston, 720K FDD

If you want a dos 6.0 boot disk to get into dos prompt i can give you one, also if you do have a zip drive from iomega that connects via lpt1, i think i may be able to get Windows 2.0 or something loaded onto a Diskette if it can fit i am not quite sure i was able to do that with 1.0 if you can get the hardrive working i dunno, i dont know too much with 1790. I know for my brothers laptop there was a write error to the hardrive so i got 25/60 to save from the hardrive with fdisk enough for windows 3.11 before that i used the bootdisk and just played oregon trail on it

get dynamic drive overlay http://emsatechnologies.com/html/disk_managers.html dowload it to a flopy insert the dos disk one when it starts hit f3 so it will go to the command promp insted of install then run the disk of dynamic drive overlay it will erase your hard drive after running it install dos and then windows it worken on my laptop i had the same problem