Re: Defeting Crappy Bios
The easiest way to get around this is to boot from a windows diskette and flash a more liberal bios. You can get an updated bios from compaq directly (it was patched for y2k), although I'm unsure wether this bios will solve your problem. http://www29.compaq.com/falco/sp_result.asp?Model=2722Os=0 HTH, Neal. - Original Message - From: TooMany Mirrors [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Monday, September 30, 2002 1:15 AM Subject: Defeting Crappy Bios I have a compaq computer I got for $30.00 and though a good price, has a really awful bios feature that not only only lets me boot to a floppy it won't boot to anything but a windows boot disk. I hostly can't explain it, but that is the state of things, so don't ask :) So my question is if there is a way to boot to a windows floppy, I have a win98 disk available so it's idea for me, and still install Linux. I'm also concered about being able to boot linux once it's install (if it's installed :) ) Thanks for any tips. By the way it's a Compaq Presario 4714 with a Pentium 1 and 24MB mem so on an so forth. _ MSN Photos is the easiest way to share and print your photos: http://photos.msn.com/support/worldwide.aspx -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED] -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Defeting Crappy Bios
There is nothing more that can be done in the bios as far as adding the cdrom etc. It is how it is and my only options right now are to figure out how to install linux after booting to a win98 floppy. :( I also fdisked the whole disk, so most of the bios features required the hardrive stuff which is no longer there. If I boot to a Debian floppy it just cycles the rebooting right after the Compaq splash screen. _ MSN Photos is the easiest way to share and print your photos: http://photos.msn.com/support/worldwide.aspx -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Defeting Crappy Bios
on Mon, Sep 30, 2002, TooMany Mirrors ([EMAIL PROTECTED]) wrote: There is nothing more that can be done in the bios as far as adding the cdrom etc. It is how it is and my only options right now are to figure out how to install linux after booting to a win98 floppy. :( I also fdisked the whole disk, so most of the bios features required the hardrive stuff which is no longer there. If I boot to a Debian floppy it just cycles the rebooting right after the Compaq splash screen. Some Compaqs (and I think yours is a later date, but I could be wrong) had part of the BIOS on a hidden partition on the HD. Deleting this is Not Good. OTOH, if all you did was fdisk the system, you should be able to restore it with the right partition specs, if you can get these anywhere. If you can boot MS Legacy MS Windows to a DOS mode, you can bootstrap GNU/Linux via LOADLIN.EXE. Google for further info. Peace. -- Karsten M. Self [EMAIL PROTECTED]http://kmself.home.netcom.com/ What Part of Gestalt don't you understand? Microsoft offers them the one thing most business people will pay any price for - the ability to say we had no choice - everyone's doing it that way. -- Andrew Grygus http://www.aaxnet.com/ msg04381/pgp0.pgp Description: PGP signature
Re: Defeting Crappy Bios
TooMany Mirrors wrote: There is nothing more that can be done in the bios as far as adding the cdrom etc. It is how it is and my only options right now are to figure out how to install linux after booting to a win98 floppy. :( I also fdisked the whole disk, so most of the bios features required the hardrive stuff which is no longer there. If I boot to a Debian floppy it just cycles the rebooting right after the Compaq splash screen. _ MSN Photos is the easiest way to share and print your photos: http://photos.msn.com/support/worldwide.aspx Dunno it this will help or not, but I use it here. If that thing has a CDROM on it, you can use the Windows rescue floppy to boot to a command prompt with CDROM SUPPORT. On my WinME rescue floppy, it is option 2. Place a Debian CDROM in the CD player and let the system boot off the floppy to the A: prompt. Change over to the CDROM drive letter (it will tell you which one it is) and go to the install directory. Run boot.bat and you are off to the races. Cheers, -Don Spoon- -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Defeting Crappy Bios
I have a compaq computer I got for $30.00 and though a good price, has a really awful bios feature that not only only lets me boot to a floppy it won't boot to anything but a windows boot disk. I hostly can't explain it, but that is the state of things, so don't ask :) So my question is if there is a way to boot to a windows floppy, I have a win98 disk available so it's idea for me, and still install Linux. I'm also concered about being able to boot linux once it's install (if it's installed :) ) Thanks for any tips. By the way it's a Compaq Presario 4714 with a Pentium 1 and 24MB mem so on an so forth. _ MSN Photos is the easiest way to share and print your photos: http://photos.msn.com/support/worldwide.aspx -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Defeting Crappy Bios
Compaqs tend to be problematic. I've worked with several (starting in 1984 with an 8086 DeskPro) and have run into problems of some sort with every one. If you can get to the BIOS setup, possibly you can configure it to boot to a CD-ROM or hard drive. Try hitting the F10 key during the boot process. Friends don't let friends buy Compaq. On Mon, Sep 30, 2002 at 01:15:39AM -0400, TooMany Mirrors wrote: I have a compaq computer I got for $30.00 and though a good price, has a really awful bios feature that not only only lets me boot to a floppy it won't boot to anything but a windows boot disk. I hostly can't explain it, but that is the state of things, so don't ask :) So my question is if there is a way to boot to a windows floppy, I have a win98 disk available so it's idea for me, and still install Linux. I'm also concered about being able to boot linux once it's install (if it's installed :) ) Thanks for any tips. By the way it's a Compaq Presario 4714 with a Pentium 1 and 24MB mem so on an so forth. -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
