Cannot access Bios on Compaq 5333CL

Recommended by Wim's BIOS...

by **ferris209** » Tue Jan 18, 2005 11:23 am

Hello all, I recently purchased a brand new shiney 7200 rpm 8 mb cache Seagate 200GB hard drive to replace my crusty old 5400 rpm 2 mb cache Maxtor 80GB factory HD. I've had my Compaq 5333CL for about 3 years now and its worked really good. I've kept it always up to date. I am currently running Windows XP Pro with 1.5 MB of Ram. Anyways, everytime I try to enter the bios and the screen with the red compaq logo, it simply goes to a blank screen with a single blinking curser in the top left corner for a few seconds then it boots nromally into Windows XP. It does say to press f10 and that is what I do. I scavaged the Compaq and HP websites for some sort of utility or something to recover my Bios, but since this is a pre-Hewlett packard takeover model, any help is very hard to find. CAN ANYONE PLEASE HELP ME!!!!!!!!!!!!!! I'd love to start using my nice HD, I can't stand the tought of now owning a $150 paper weight. Here's an info link on my computer http://h10025.www1.hp.com/ewfrf/wc/docu ... =c00009497

BiosMan · by **KachiWachi** » Tue Jan 18, 2005 2:32 pm

Did you copy the "diagnostic partition" over from the original drive? (If this machine has one that is...)

by **ferris209** » Tue Jan 18, 2005 7:31 pm

I haven't even touched the factory HD yet, so I assume it should be there.

by **Toby B** » Tue Jan 25, 2005 1:16 pm

Enhancements

Adds support for up to 3GB of memory. Adds support for Pentium C1 stepping microprocessors. Adds support for Celeron B1 stepping microprocessors. Updates the PXE ROM to version 4.1.08 for integrated Intel NIC.

No support for the drive with the latest ROMpaq availible. So you are pretty much SOL unless someone can figure out how to mod compaq BIOS'es.....

by **ferris209** » Sun Jan 30, 2005 12:24 pm

I hate Compaq, at since before HP. I plan on building my own Computer now anyways. Damn Compaq! Thanks all!

by **Ritchie** » Mon Jan 31, 2005 8:38 am

Pity about not being able to recognise the new HDD in the Compaq. I would be skeptical as to whether it would be detected correctly anyway, even with a recent/latest BIOS.

As to getting into the BIOS though, I personally consider jamming the keyboard and then taking advantage of the errors generated to allow me to enter the BIOS. However I realise this is a bit harsh on the keyboard.

However, if you are happy with 200GB, this should be a nice HDD to use in the new PC. I am personally waiting for the 10,000 RPM ATA drives to start dropping in price, to comparable prices to the current 7,2000s.