Burned Controller on Drive

Fdisk showed that the Windows 98 drive has 88% usage.

Was wondering if BIOS hard drive support for the second drive, the 10 GigaByte with Windows XP, could be achieved by creating another primary partition on the 2 GigaByte drive with Windows 98 using FDISK in the 12% area that seems available, and then letting my Compaq F10 utilities diskette have a try at creating information on the 2 GB hard drive necessary for the computer to enter the F10 utilities and set up the 10 GB hard drive?

FDISK currently reports the Status of both drives as "Active".
If this is possible and works, I need the Windows XP drive to boot.

Was planning to set the 10 GB XP drive as primary slave before beginning. Anyone know if this strategy would work?

I'm pretty sure that you can't use fdisk to create a partition on a drive without losing your data, but there are partion programs that will do this.

Leurgy,
You can create additional partitions without losing data as long as there is unpartitioned space available on the drive.

Thanks Robert M, didn't know that. Never had the occasion to fdisk a drive with data on it. That is good to know with the size of the drives these days. Lately I've tended to stick to the utilities offered by the HDD manufacturers.

I'm unclear exactly what your asking here, but if it is whether you can get around a bios drive size limitation by partitioning up a drive in to sizes that are within the bios' limitation the answer is no. A bios limitation is for an entire drive it sees, regardless of partitioning.

Again, I may have misunderstood your question/statements so post back if I did.

My understanding is that Compaq stores or used to store some BIOS/CMOS setup information on the hard drive.

The basic problem is that I cannot seem to enter the BIOS/CMOS setup on the Compaq computer using F10

Some BIOS/CMOS options are presented when the CTRL+F10 keys are used but I can't see where to install an additional drive...the 10 GB.

Anyone with a Compaq Deskpro out there?

Check the Compaq site for your particular model. I've seen some Compaqs that need a setup or configuration utility that is on a floppy you boot with. Post back with the model number and I'll see if I can find what I'm thinking of.

This is an example of what I'm looking for but I don't know your Deskpro model number.

Thanks Leurgy,
It is a Compaq Deskpro 4000 model 5166.
I may have tried previously with a diskette that was outdated.
Anyway, I downloaded the file from the link you posted...and it seems to be applicable for many models, including the 5166. The downloaded file uncompresses many files and running the makedisk.bat creates a series of 3 diskettes when executed and I created the 3 diskettes.
One small problem: after creating the 3rd diskette, a message says to be sure to read the ROMPAQ text file, and there is not one included on the 3 diskettes when I searched. It's not in the download directory where I downloaded the file and uncompressed to either. Nice going Compaq.
Also:
The Compaq info at their website states or leads me to believe that the diskette can be used directly to enter the F10 utility just by booting up with the diskette, but I don't think that's the case. We shall see.
Will try this new set on the Compaq 5166, and see how it goes. Will let you know.

Think I found the manual. Got this from it.

"5-48 Desktop Removal and Replacement Procedures
The system will automatically recognize a hard drive sold by Compaq or any other Plug and Play
hard drives and will automatically reconfigure the computer. If you have installed a third-party hard
drive that is not a Plug and Play device, you will need to run Computer Setup to reconfigure the
computer. Refer to Chapter 2, “Troubleshooting,” for information on running Computer Setup."

The page for the manual is here. For some reason it is split into chapters. Chapter 2, "Troubleshooting" is here.

A rompaq is a bios flash utility and the rompaq.txt is the instructions on how to do it. A typical rompaq.txt.

Rompaq downloadable files.

HTH

The computer does not produce the white rectangle on the display screen for BIOS entry.
An hourglass with sand running through it is displayed after powering up (lower left corner) with the Compaq orange screen.

Pressing the F10 key while hourglasss is displayed does nothing.

I tried the diskettes and no luck.
First of all, the computer is reporting a "1790 disk 0 error' with our 10 GB as primary master and no other drives connected.


After booting with the first diskette, it can be used to run diagnostics and Manage the DIAGNOSTIC Partition.
This diskette reports an 8.X Gigabyte hard drive during tests and no errors.

The second and third diskettes do contain a setup.exe program for configuring the system and they execute.
When trying to "install system setup" with the second and third setup disks, a message appears that says that a diagnostic partition cannot be found, and basically use the first diskette.
When trying to create the diagnostic partition using the disk 1 utility I get
"There is not enough space available on the hard drive for the diagnostics partition.
To install the Compaq utilities, you must free at least two megabytes of drive space at the beginning of the hard drive.
You must also have an available entry in the master boot record for the partition information.
Caution; if a partition exists of type 12h, do not remove it from the master boot record. if the partition is at the beginning of the hard drive, it will be increased in size to make room for the Compaq utilities."
Also, Getting the message
"Error loading operating system"

Where can I find a motherboard BIOS upgrade chip for the old Gateway 486 computer to enable it to support a 10 GB Quantum drive? This seems to be easier than dealing with a Compaq computer at this point.

Quote:

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that says that a diagnostic partition cannot be found

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The compaq's original HDD had a "hidden" partition that had that on it.

If you were to blow off the Win98 and put XP on it? Can't you slave this drive on an XP machine that can handle 10GB?

Quote:

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Where can I find a motherboard BIOS upgrade chip for the old Gateway 486 computer

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If it boots run Belarc or Everest Home or Aida32 and identify the MB. Need to know that to get the Bios info for the flash.

My next trick to get my old Compaq Presario 5222 to use a 60GB slave drive was to use a ATA card. Fact is you can get a ATA 133 PCI card and use the largest drive made.

If this drive has an OS on it the only way it is going to boot anything is if you put it back in the machine it came out of. It wont be able to boot anything else, unless MAYBE you do a repair install of the XP on it.

Where is the original machine?

Thanks for the replies.
Leurgy, is the Belarc program for motherboard identification free?
The original Compaq computer this drive was installed in is currently being used for Tax returns and contains a new 60 GB drive running Windows XP. I don't want to risk opening this computer and possibly opening another can of worms or damaging anything because a full backup of this computer's drive and data files does not exist yet. But yes, I agree that slaving in a working Windows XP system with NTFS would be a good plan.

Think I may still have a jumper related problem with the 1790 Disk 0 error. Need some jumper documentation on a Quantum 10 GB LCT 10 Fireball hard drive.

I think he's running the same version of Windows XP Home and it has the NTFS filing system on the newer Compaq with 60 GB and was thinking of creating a startup diskette with it to boot the other computer into XP.
I found the intructions for creating the XP startup diskette at Microsoft and the recovery console diskettes and he has a Windows XP CD.

Leurgy, don't understand the statement about not being able to boot with the drive except in the original computer.

Train, yes an expansion card may be an option also.
Thanks for staying with me on this.