stubborn Compaq BIOS! cannot access floppy or hard drive
Posted: Tue Jul 22, 2003 5:47 pm
I've replaced a motherboard in a Compaq Presario 7360. There was no video signal from the previous mb.
Now, this motherboard gives me video at bootup. The Compaq logo appears, the memory is checked, then the light on the floppy drive comes on, but the system never access the floppy disk. The light on the floppy drive goes off, and it just hangs with nothing else in the POST.
I cannot access the CMOS setup using F10 or any other combination of keys. I assumed it might have been a bad CPU, but changing that didn't work either.
I've swapped out the memory and power supply while disconnecting everything else...same result.
I've discovered that the brilliant engineers at Compaq put system information on a 'bios' partition on the hard drive. Appearantly, setup cannot be accessed without getting info from this 'system partition'.
So, I hooked the hard drive as slave on another machine. I didn't see any problems. The main partition and system partition both appeared. I could view both partition's files with no problems.
So, I've been trying to get some response with the hard drive connected to IDE1. I still receive the same response.
Should I flash the BIOS? Is there a way to do it without access to the floppy drive?
Could the partition on the hard drive be corrupt even though it looks ok as slave on another computer?
Any other ideas would be helpful.
ComputerBud
Now, this motherboard gives me video at bootup. The Compaq logo appears, the memory is checked, then the light on the floppy drive comes on, but the system never access the floppy disk. The light on the floppy drive goes off, and it just hangs with nothing else in the POST.
I cannot access the CMOS setup using F10 or any other combination of keys. I assumed it might have been a bad CPU, but changing that didn't work either.
I've swapped out the memory and power supply while disconnecting everything else...same result.
I've discovered that the brilliant engineers at Compaq put system information on a 'bios' partition on the hard drive. Appearantly, setup cannot be accessed without getting info from this 'system partition'.
So, I hooked the hard drive as slave on another machine. I didn't see any problems. The main partition and system partition both appeared. I could view both partition's files with no problems.
So, I've been trying to get some response with the hard drive connected to IDE1. I still receive the same response.
Should I flash the BIOS? Is there a way to do it without access to the floppy drive?
Could the partition on the hard drive be corrupt even though it looks ok as slave on another computer?
Any other ideas would be helpful.
ComputerBud