Today I find myself in a bit of a quandry, I have a friends laptop, it is a Compaq Armada 1592DMT. He purchased this from a Gov. auction. It had Windows 95 installed, and the OS was in bad shape. I couldn`t copy any data from either floppy, or cd-rom to the C drive. I gave him my copy of Windows 98se, and we fdisked the hd, and put the copy of Windows 98se on the laptop. No problems with the install, but the same problem with not being able to put any data via the floppy disk, or the cd-rom to the C drive. I get an error: The drive you are trying to write to is "write protected". I don`t believe that there is anything wrong with the floppy, or cd-rom because the floppy took the boot disk ok, and the cdrom took the 98se disk ok. If the C drive has been write protected, how am I able to do a fresh install of 98se? and if the C drive is really write protected, how would I go about changing it so I can write to C? This is a new one on me, I have done several diff installs, but never ran across anything like this. Thanks for any thoughts/ideas on my quandry.

Regards
IKE

Curiosity - what happens if you try to rename a file which is on the C drive?

DerekW

CHECK THESE OUT

There are other hits in Google for "C drive write protected". Maybe more (not tried) under "hard drive write protected", etc.

DerekW

It's odd you could 'write' to the c: drive when installing windows but not afterwards. I'd think it's either a bios thing--perhaps some kind of virus protection--or third party software that was added to the first drive sector. Fdisk doesn't alter that sector so anything there won't be removed by removing the partition.

Check the horse-and-buggy bios setup that Compaq provides and see if you can see anything there that may be the reason. If not, you might run fdisk/mbr from a dos prompt to refresh the master boot record that occupies the first sector.

Derek, thanks much for the links, they provided me with a place to start to try to figure this out. This looks like it could be a little complicated. I had no idea that Compaq might have put the bios set up on a small partition on the hd, and that in the bios, there might be an area to turn off write protection, that really through me for a loop considering now that I have fdisked the hd, I have no way to enter the bios to see if there is a way to turn off write protection in the bios area. Just wanted to let you know I appreciate the help. I am having a hard time trying to figure out if there is a download on the compaq site I can put on a floppy that at boot up will let me enter bios. You would think that they would have to have someway of doing it.

Regards
IKE

Hay DAVEINCAPS, thanks for the reply, and info. Would you mind looking at my last response to Derek and see what you think about the Compaq bios. Also I have never fdisked the mbr before, do I just use command prompt only, and at the prompt type in fdisk/mbr ? Is there anything else I would need to know about fdisking the mbr? Also just wanted to let you know I appreciate your taking time.

Regards
IKE

Yes, its as simple as you described. You just use the command fdsik/mbr and that does it.

I'll leave you with DAVE on the Compaq detail as he obviously knows more than me about these particular machines and I'm not sure about the rammifications of using fdisk/mbr on them.

DerekW

I usually do an fdisk/mbr after booting from a bootdisk but you could probably do it from within windows. If you run it from the 98 RUN line there needs to be a space between fdisk and /mbr. With dos the space is optional. I doubt there's any danger in running it on a compaq. The bios partition shouldn't be affected, especially if you've removed it.

Go to the compaq support page for your model. You should be able to download a diagnostic/setup disk and run bios setup from there.

Thanks Derek, I appreciate your taking time. I will be with the forementioned laptop tomorrow sometime, and see if I can get this thing going.

Regards
IKE

Hi DAVEINCAPS, I went to the Compaq site, and downloaded the setup disk, tomorrow I will try both the disk, and fdisk /mbr. Thanks for the help, I will let you know what happens.

Regards
IKE

Hey DAVEINCAPS, and Derek, have been out of town for a while, and just got back, so I wanted to let you know that the fdisk /mbr did the trick. I went to the Compaq site, and downloaded the setup utility, but didn`t see anything in there in regards to write protection, so I went with the fdisk /mbr. I ran it, turned the computer off, and let it sit all night with no power. Turned it on the next day, now I can copy to the hd from both the floppy, and the cdrom. Just wanted to say thank you for taking the time, I learned something I never knew about hard drives, and my friend now has a working laptop. Have a good one!

Regards
IKE

You're welcome. We're glad it worked out. I don't think I've ever run across a write protect option in the MBR but an fdisk/mbr seemed like a logical thing to try. Thanks for posting back.

Yep, great news and thx for taking the trouble to pop back and let us know.

DerekW