Questions on CMOS flashing vs. bios upgrades

**granto** · February 28th, 2006, 10:33 PM

Ah nice thanks, I thought I was going crazy with the bootdisk.

The very extensive memtest is running and should be done sometime next year.... No errors as of yet. thanks, and please don't forget about me!!!

**granto** · March 1st, 2006, 12:55 AM

5 passes of memtest86 v3.2 without a single error.

**granto** · March 1st, 2006, 01:34 AM

A couple virus programs on the boot CD (Mcafee, f-prot, avg) report no virii in the boot sector.....

**format c:** · March 1st, 2006, 03:59 AM

I would let memtest run overnight to stress the ram and reveal any underlying problems
Then try the Windows Memory diagnostic, It helped me find problems that memtest did not pick up
Test your laptops CPU with prime95, Maybe the level two cache is going south and giving you these errors
Check and see if your CD rom drive is working OK, Maybe the laser is geting weak and causing these install errors, You did try two cds , Are they factory cds or burned copies ?

Hope this helps

**granto** · March 1st, 2006, 01:45 PM

Nothing yet. I hate to just throw out a laptop, but sheesh! Redhat 9 installation wouldn't go past the first driver load.

I keep getting this sense that there's a hidden partition that persists that contains some kind of compaq system recovery that's screwing me up. I tried to fdisk it with fat32 and a partition showed up that ended at sector 64. Likewise, when I try xp installs, there is some 8mb "unpartitioned space." That wouldn't make sense if this was a brand new hard drive but I think the drive was installed by compaq. My ultimate boot CD doesn't seem to have an option to zero fill absolutely everything. Anyone know of some good utitilities to take everything off, including any record in the partition tables, etc.? (zap and kill look good but won't cover 40gb). I want the whole drive to be nothing. Maybe I could send it through an MRI, or something with enough flux to kill it, perahaps a particle accelerator? The center of the earth?

**BOB IROC** · March 1st, 2006, 02:25 PM

Gateway has a nice utility that will do Harddrive diagnostics and has an option to Zero out the entire drive. http://support.gateway.com/support/d...m=GWSCAN&st=kw The nice thing about this one is it doesn't seem to be brand specific and I have used this on many different computer brands. Otherwise the HardDrive manufacturer usually has diagnostic/zero out utilities for download from their sites. Is there any complete system diagnostics that you can run to test the over all system like motherboard componants and processor.

**granto** · March 1st, 2006, 02:43 PM

Cool. Yeah, a lot of these utilities are proprietary and do care about brand names, I got sick of that game so I booted to linux and gave it the old

dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/hda bs=512

So, I'll see what happens. Will take forever I'm sure.

**tyamada** · March 1st, 2006, 03:34 PM

If I recall right on Compaq hard drives there are two partitions, one contains the BIOS information when you press the key sequence to get into it. The other partition is the usable part of the drive.

To confirm the drive has two partitions you should use a Ghost boot disk and look at the hard drive.

If it does indeed have two partitions then your BIOS information is on the first one. If you use a new drive you don't have the BIOS information to tell the computer where to boot from.

**granto** · March 1st, 2006, 08:00 PM

NO GO. After a random pass and a zero fill of the whole drive, same old story. Yet the 8mb partition persists! Can bios be writing this automatically?

There's plenty of gripes about the system recovery partition out there, and about the reverse engineered bios for compaq. I can't figure out anything though. I don't even know the mobo manufacturer or if there is a non-compaq bios available.

If anyone you know ever buys a compaq, give them a gun and a bullet: they're gonna need it, and not for the computer either.

**granto** · March 1st, 2006, 08:02 PM

Oh and Tyamada, from what I gather, that "BIOS partition" is old news for compaq, like prior to 98. They use CMOS now.

**geoscomp** · March 1st, 2006, 08:04 PM

Originally Posted by granto

NO GO. After a random pass and a zero fill of the whole drive, same old story. Yet the 8mb partition persists! Can bios be writing this automatically?

There's plenty of gripes about the system recovery partition out there, and about the reverse engineered bios for compaq. I can't figure out anything though. I don't even know the mobo manufacturer or if there is a non-compaq bios available.

If anyone you know ever buys a compaq, give them a gun and a bullet: they're gonna need it, and not for the computer either.

Frequently Asked Questions

Q: Why is there an 8-megabyte (MB) partition after setting up the hard disk partitions during the MS-DOS portion of WindowsXP setup?

A:
This is the space at the end of the hard disk that needs to be there for the ability to create Dynamic Disks. Normally there is some space remaining at the end of the hard disk. It used to be hidden from the user. Windows® 2000 and Windows® XP have to guarantee the space is there.

**geoscomp** · March 1st, 2006, 08:22 PM

Originally Posted by OMGmissinglink

zero filling the drive does not touch the MBR, use the link Daffy posted put them on your bootable floppy, boot the PC run zap then wipe your drive should be clean.

However, as microsoft points out in the above faq..if you install xp again, the 8mb partition will be back

**geoscomp** · March 1st, 2006, 09:31 PM

Originally Posted by OMGmissinglink

Yes you will rewrite the MBR with fresh install.

yes..of course it will, but the 8 mb partition, as pointed out by microsoft is NOT the boot record. It is the reserved Dynamic Disc space. To use 8 mb for a boot record would require you to be using an awfully large number of partitions!

**granto** · March 1st, 2006, 09:33 PM

The utility (I think it was KillDisk) I used started at sector 0... I'm pretty sure it got the MBR. Hmmm.. OK, I'll try again. I hate my life.

**granto** · March 1st, 2006, 09:41 PM

Still... don't you think an antivirus would have found something in the MBR if it was there? So, I just zapped, saw PXE for the first time yet, that's a good thing. We'll see.