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Laptop Help Please....

Tominator

Diamond Member
I bought a Compaq LTE 5300 from another Member about a few weeks ago. Everyting was as advertised and for occasional surfingit suits my purpose.

I installed Win98 on one of the 2 harddrives. Updated and bought a new NIC PCMIA.....everything running great.

I've only had it running for 5 or 6 hours tops....not a problem other than it not wanting to boot using just the battery although it showed 83% charge.

Tried booting it up a few days ago and after normal boot sequence, includeing access to BIOS, I get a 'insert boot disk and press any key' message.

In BIOS the hard drive says 'none.' Also, no matter the boot sequence it will not boot from a startup disk....it seeks and the disk makes the obligatory buzzing floppies are known for. The icon on the LCD display breifly shows the floppy icon, but it will not read and load the startup files.

I'm on an docking bay, btw. Tried removing the battery. Switching floppy and CDrom positions do not help.

I've tried both harddrives and neither is seen in BIOS....

If I could get the boot disk to work, I could verify the harddrive is setup properly, but???

I'm new to the laptop world and have ran out of ideas...Thanks in advance!
 


<< If I could get the boot disk to work, I could verify the harddrive is setup properly, but??? >>


hmm, have you set the boot order in bios to floppy first as the previous owner may have changed the boot order?
 
well reading from your post, I think there is a problem with the hard drive. Try to use the other hard drive and see if this will work. Sounds like the hdd dies.





Darno
 
I have set the boot sequence. Changed devices from the Docking station to the laptop..swapped cdrom and floppy.

Even if the drive was bad it should still boot from the floppy.

I'm beginning to think it is a motherboard/controller problem. At least if it was a desktop that's what I'd think...


I tried it with the second hard drive....the floppy light comes on and the hard drive access icon comes on....freeze...no access to the bios...
 
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