IM having trouble with the BIOS in my Compaq contura 4/25 it wont let me change the settings for the hard disk drive so i used the closest one but windows wont load without a boot disk any ideas

It appears that you have an older computer and more then likely a newer hard diskette drive. On old computers they had a pre-defind listing of supported hard diskette drives which does not give you much ability to define your own settings. We would recommend that either you attempt to see if their is a BIOS update for your motherboard that can update your BIOS to support this larger hard diskette drive. If no BIOS update is available for this type of issue see if the hard disk drive manufacture has a DDO (DISK DRIVE OVERLAY) this is a diskette that can be used to 'trick' the computer into thinking it can support your hard diskette drive.

jim, the message above is correct; however, in all the bios's i've seen, for 386, 486, 586, there is a "type 47", which lets you enter the parameters of a "user type" harddrive. i once had a 853 meg caviar drive, and all the pre-defined harddrives in the settings were well below my harddrive's specifications. after you modify your bios, make sure to save your new settings before exiting.