Compaq Restore woes w/ new HD

[mlevine]

Howdy all,

Current Delimma:
Compaq 5005SR (933 Intel Box, out of warranty)

Harddrive failed

Replaced HD.

Recovery CD will not work now. (Worked with faulty drive though), says the CD failed. It has 2 CD drives, both give the same error.

Bios Does see the new 80gig drive (vs the 60 that was in there). I was able to take hd to another PC .. Fdisk then formatted to Fat32

I knew at some point companies would put some special info on Hard drives to make sure there machines O/S disks were protected.

Anyone know how I can get info onto this new HD to possibly help the CD to run?? Can not find info using traditional Compaq website.

Thank you!

 

[franklin97355]

Have you tried a different bootable cd to make sure the cd drive is indeed OK? I know hps are cable select on most of their machines, you might want to check the jumpers on the old drive.

 

[kiddpete]

If it says the CD failed, why are you looking at the HD? By 'Recovery CD', do you mean the CD with Win XP on it (assuming you're talking about XP)? Is the system BIOS set to boot from the CD? Are you trying to boot from the CD?

 

[mlevine]

Hello Guys, Thanks for the input.

After doing some more digging..(Kudos Google) I think I see what is going down.

Frank - Yes, I tried a bootable W2k CD, and jumpers ae correct.

Kiddpete- This was answered once I did my digging a bit. (Side note the CD my customer gave me was a RecoveryCD and not a restore CD from Compaq.. I know have try and explain that one to her )

Seems Compaq puts a small partition (4mb) on the drive with some serial numbers and bios info etc. So I put in the new HD on Master and the "bad" one on as a slave, and the CD loaded up to its menu. Which is when I found out I do nate have the right Cd from the customer.

Now I suppose I could just install another O/S and be done with it, but the customer might not like the new o/s environment that they might be used to.

Still the trick is to make sure inthe future if this user needs to quick restore again, and that bad drive is no longer in there, they can do this without issue.

I "last" resort I thought of was to copy that mini partition over to the other newer HD via Partition Magic/Drive copy..

Damn Compaq.. could have evolved a bit eh? No wonder HP bought you guys up.

Will try to keep you updated..

 

[BadBigBen]

It's a simple trick by COMPAQ to have you service the PC by it's techies (ergo make more moola for them)... but believe it or not most PC companies (Siemens, Dell, HP, and others) work the same way... Usually when I was confronted with this problem, I installed the same OS from another full version with their KEY...

Ben

 

[jsauce]

Well you've just discovered why compaqs are terrible buys. Compaq in their genius has made it impossible to replace hardware or even some software in their machines. Compaq unlike every other company actually loads a portion of their bios code onto the original hard drive. Now when this thing dies or you format it you lose that information. Not only that but you may discover its not so simple to try and install a new copy of the os on another hard drive and simply put it into the machine either. Since the bios that isn't on the hard drive boots the machine it examines the new disc and determines its not the original and the fun begins. It may boot the first time no problems but then on the next reboot it will say "not a valid os" or something to this effect. You may ask why they do this? Well as someone has pointed out it makes you have to spend more money on trying to get it fixed by having to send it to them in the end. Or do what I did. Buy the compaq which is really cheap say $400, rip out all the usable parts, not integrated and buy a new mobo and case and voila. Problem solved. Spread the word don't buy compaq.

John D. Saucier
jsauce@magicguild.com
Certified Technician
Network Administrator