On Wed, Aug 12, 2009 at 6:56 PM, Michael Sullivan<[email protected]> wrote: > On Wed, 2009-08-12 at 18:51 -0500, Paul Hartman wrote: >> On Wed, Aug 12, 2009 at 5:16 PM, Michael Sullivan<[email protected]> >> wrote: >> > We can't take the hard drive out and put a different one in. I strongly >> > implied that my wife and I are clumsy. We don't have the fine motor >> > skills needed to put a hard drive into a computer. She barely had >> > enough skill to get that one out. >> >> Understood. What's the make and model of the computer? Maybe there is >> some info on the web about it that we can dig up. Perhaps someone else >> has the same computer and has tried to figure out how to do the same >> thing. >> > > It's a Compaq Presario CQ5110F. And it's going back to Office Depot > tomorrow. If they're willing to install my old hard drive without > voiding the warrantee, that's fine, but if they don't, I'm demanding a > refund and telling everyone that asks me for advice on where to buy a > new computer not to shop there. My wife found on the internet that all > new computers built since 2002 come with a bios option to boot from an > external device. This one didn't.
I found this page that walks through the BIOS screens, but it all looks fairly generic: http://h10025.www1.hp.com/ewfrf/wc/document?docname=bph07110&cc=us&lc=en&dlc=en&product=3978596 Ironically, it even says "Boot Device Priority (The order for the boot process. For example, removable devices, DVD optical drive, and hard disk drive)." but, again, the descriptions all seem fairly generic so they probably just copy & pasted from other manuals. It looks like the most recent BIOS update for the motherboard in that computer is from 2004, so I don't think there's much hope for an update coming from there. If you have trouble adding/removing parts, I would recommend taking a look at a Dell computer if you can find one around. I have a Dell Dimension from about 3 years ago (about $400 or so at the time, Pentium 4) and it is the easiest computer I've ever seen to get into. Completely tool-free. There's a button that makes the side of the case pop off, the hard drives are in plastic clip that slide gently in and out of a side-facing drive bay at the bottom of the case, away from the rest of the mess, and the PCI cards are held in by plastic levers. No screws, no tiny spaces that you can't see. The SATA cables in newer computers are much easier to deal with than IDE, too. I can literally open it, take a hard drive out, put a new one in, and close it in about a minute. It takes me longer to catch my breath after climbing around on the floor under the desk than it does to actually change the part. :) (And it has successfully booted from a USB hard drive.)
