Compaq Armada 1700, no BIOS access

[Colargole]

I have a client that has an Armada 1700 that needs to be up-graded. The system will not let me into the BIOS regardless of what I try? Even when I press F10 it gives me "Non-System disk or disk error". In order for the client or me to gain access to it we must put the WIN98 disk in the CDD and press F10 - Enter then we get access to the system. Can anyone tell me how to get into the BIOS so that I can get ride of this fast post.

Serge

[Garak]

Welcome to Windrivers. If I remember correctly, the Compaq Armarda 1700 is a laptop. And in most cases with compaqs (that I've come across) the BIOS is stored on a partition on the actual hard drive. Has the hard drive been re-partitioned recently?

[kennel]

I think you could download the F10 and diagnostics from HP/Compaq and run it from the floppies. Or if you have another there you could make the disks from it.

[Colargole]

Thank you GARAK, but no new HDD partition was made on the HDD, can you elaborate more please.

Thank you KENNEL for the information.

[Garak]

Well, as I said earlier, alot of COMPAQ laptops store the BIOS on the hard drive, so if the hard drive had been re-partitioned or changed, then you would not be able to access the BIOS without using the setup disks which can be downloaded from COMPAQ (over at the HP website). IF you can give some more information on what exactly happened / andwhat your wanting to do, I maybe able to form a better answer.

G.

[Scooter]

Go to this website

http://h18007.www1.hp.com/support/fi...e/3_973.html#0

and download the bios system rom paq. Follow the directions and it should fix your problem.

[Colargole]

Thank you Garak, as I mentionned earlier when the laptop does it's post you do not get the option to go into the BIOS, it automaticly tries to boot but it comes up with "Non-system disk or disk error". Now if I insert the Armada recovery disk and press F10 it will bring me to a selction "boot from HDD or boot from disk". By choosing "boot from HDD" you gain access to the system and everything runs normally. I tried it with a known good HDD and the same happenned. I am at a lost as to what can be wrong any help would be greatly appreashiated.

Thank you Scooter, but I already tried that and it didn't work.

[Garak]

if you have a spare hard drive handy, remove all partitions and install it in the laptop. Then, download the softpaq disks and run them there should be 3 in total, this will create the BIOS partition on the hard drive. Then recreate a standard fat32 partition format and sys it and try it from there. If it then works, then repeat on the customer hard drive after backing up anything that is needed.

Hopefully, that will work.

[Colargole]

Thank you Garak, will try.

[Garak]

hope it works for you.