This old Qompack upride PC suddenly will not boot Recycled the HD cables (WinXP) Changed the HD & its cable Removed the Bios battery (there are no link to remove & replace for this) Checked whatever seams relevant in Bios On bootup goes to a flashing small line on screen top left.
Does it load the bios? Edit: Sorry, stupid question, missed the part where you said you can check it; okay, what's the boot order say?
OK....... managed to start it with another 10 GB HD, & works fine even on the net. But the 40gb HD (which works fine on my other PC) it tries but just can make it. Tryed to boot on XP CD, went to choices screen & clicked "R" it proceeded but ended up to black screen with text ending "Type Exit to reboot for restore........." but there is no line to type to & hungs there. I found this " Storage Hard Drive Smart II Ultra ATA 100 – 20 GB" in these Compaq Specs, although it is for the 800. Could it be that it only uses 20gb HDs or less & my 40gb is not accepted? http://h18000.www1.hp.com/products/quickspecs/10832_div/10832_div.html#QuickSpecs thanx ......nick
does it recognize the full size of the 40gb hdd in bios? if no then it is a bios issue and there is probably no way around the limitation, i have seen some old systems have such limitations. if yes... maybe try setting the partition in fdisk then run os setup? or maybe try linux and see if it can install to a 40gb partition?