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Formatting a Compaq PC

Agum

Agum

New Member
Hi,

I have this old Compaq PC here that's a Pentium 2 550Mhz I believe.. yeah I know it should go to the trash can or the garage but hey it's a P2 it has some uses. I've been wanting to format it to clean up the junk on it (although backing up data is a pain, mind you there's no cd-burner of any kinds on it so I either have to use a USB drive or transfer over network..) and install a new OS on it. (another question: is a P2 550mhz good enough to run XP? or will I have to stick with win2000)

Anyway the main problem is that I can't enter the BIOS menu for this computer. When it boots up it shows the red COMPAQ words and no memory check or anything, and I tried hitting DEL all the way from it boots to windows loading and it didn't really do anything. Does anyone know of the secret key-combination to enter BIOS for Compaq computers or is it not accessible by the public person at all? If it's not possible then can I format the computer at all since there is no way to boot by CD...
 
p2 550?

humm, nop, how about p3 550mhz.
pentium 2's ended at 450mhz :p

anyhow, you should be able to format via floppy.
It has a floppy drive. just pop a win98 boot floppy and boot with cdrom support.
when in dos C:\format C: \s\u
and then pop then win2k cd in and E: or F: or you cd letter and setup.exe

I think 2k setup starts under dos. if not install win98 and do an upgrade.

For that 550mhz cpu xp would be ok if you have lets say 256/512 ram on it.
But I'd go with 2k personally on it, or perhaps some linux flavor and turn that into a server box or something. If not send it my way :p
 
try F1 OR f2 , F9 OR TRY f1 TO f9 , BUT i guess it's f1 just try it, it wonder hurt your pc at all :D
 
hmm....stored info in hdd? i never heard that. and i have format c: in many compaq pcs. worked as normal. beside the topic starter was asking how to enter the bios, if she/he can't enter it, than it's hard to format c: from a diskett :tired2:
 
aki said:
beside the topic starter was asking how to enter the bios, if she/he can't enter it, than it's hard to format c: from a diskett :tired2:
Click to expand...
why is that?
Every brand-name comp has the first boot set to floppy.
even without going to the bios the format would work.

and yea, F10, in what jerry posted it said that also.
 
he/she wrote " Anyway the main problem is that I can't enter the BIOS menu for this computer. "

So bios is the a main prob not about boot from a floppy. nothing in that post mention about how to format c. from a floppy.
and don't be so sure about every brand pc boot with disk at first boot.
 
This is from a logical point of vue,

he said he couldnt boot with cd, and wanted to enter bios

I said boot from floppy.
+ logically all compurter asssembling companies set the floppy to boot #1.
imagine all the calls their custumer support gets every day asking "i screwed up, how do i start over my comp?". and hey say put floppy 1/5 and follow the instructions
they wont explain over the phone to some dude goto bios, change boot sector and whatnot? huh whats bios? ahh anyways. :p
hows it comming along agum?
 
i am sure well known companys send with the computer with recovery-cd :) even a compaq 333mhz has it. i formated compaq pcs and never got the floppy boot, i always need to go in the bios and change to floppy. Or maybe becuase it's a swedish compaq :D
 
My old dell had a reload floppy that loaded the image off a hidden partition on the HD, same with friends ibm.
but mom's hp has cd's, but its the XP age now so yea..

every format I do even now is old school floppy style :)
 
u really format in floppy now? i only do it when necessary, otherwise i use winxp format. heheh to lazy beside i don't have floppy anymore, it broke down.
 
theres a very easy way to format old compaq computers:
1) climb up 20 storey building with compaq
2) place said compaq on open window of 20th storey building
3) push
on a more serious note, unless you have the orginal software for the compaq then you in deep problems. All the recovery cds will just reload the core OS onto the computer and never really solve everything. the reason you can't get into the bios is that all compaqs lock there bios to stop people from loading anything from the computer that is compaq. you could try a cd boot from an xp cd, should work.
 
sue compaq
its your computer, you should do what you want.


oh wait. people would sue microsoft too following this logic :D
 
The Compaq "quick restore" CD is the go.. I remember my old p166 Compaq, man that was the biggest piece of garbafe ever. The quick restore CD will install Win98 for you, then like Wojtek says install Win2K. I highly doubt a 550mhz comes with 256mb ram, even on todays computers you don't wanna run XP on anything less than 256, its such a resource hog.
 
For Q1 - go for 2k, XP would run like a dog.

For Q2 - you'll need to download the Compaq 'ROM-PAK' for the particular model as jerry4dos says it does store info on the disk it's called the engineers or diagnostic cylinder which is what hold the machine diagnostics and the GUI for the BIOS. The ROM-PAK's are very particular to each range but with a bit of searching around they can be downloaded quite legally, usually just a couple of floppy images.
 
heh, the thread exploded after just a few days :)
thanks for all the reply guys.

unfortunately, wojtek, this pc I mentioned is in my home... as in home home, not the apartment near my college. it'll be a little while before I go home again so I can't get to try anything out yet.. but thanks for the responses.
 
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