How to access Bios on a compaq presario

robertlau · Mon Oct 20, 2003 6:50 pm

Greetings, My officemate claims he cannot enter the bios on his compaq presario. The machine is 1.5 to 2 years old.. What are the keystrokes?
Thanks very much...

Tue Oct 21, 2003 10:04 pm

F1 or F10 when you hear the double beep on startup.

Toby B · Wed Oct 22, 2003 9:45 am

If its only 1.5 to 2 years old I doubt the speaker is functional.

On startup when the Compaq splash screen comes up, you will see a blinking white cursor in the upper right hand corner. When you see that blinking cursor press the F10 key repeatedly.

QLeap · Tue Mar 08, 2005 7:32 pm

I've searched through pages of forum posting and haven't had much luck. I'm trying to install Linux on an old Presaio 5528 (a combined computer & monitor with a whopping 24MB of RAM!!). I want to boot from CD to do the install. I get no splash screen and have tried the F1, F10, INS, Alt + F1/F10 to access the BIOS. Sometimes I get a keyboard error, but no BIOS screen. I followed links from the forum to the HP help site, and found no useful help. Is it true the BIOS settings are stored on the hard drive, so if I reformat it I'll lose the settings? Thanks in advance for any help.

Wed Mar 09, 2005 5:39 pm

QLeap wrote:I've searched through pages of forum posting and haven't had much luck. I'm trying to install Linux on an old Presaio 5528 (a combined computer & monitor with a whopping 24MB of RAM!!). I want to boot from CD to do the install. I get no splash screen and have tried the F1, F10, INS, Alt + F1/F10 to access the BIOS. Sometimes I get a keyboard error, but no BIOS screen. I followed links from the forum to the HP help site, and found no useful help. Is it true the BIOS settings are stored on the hard drive, so if I reformat it I'll lose the settings? Thanks in advance for any help.

That's the way some were done, though I can't say for sure they did that with the 5528. You can check for yourself here:
http://h10025.www1.hp.com/ewfrf/wc/prod ... g=en&cc=ca