# Hosed my Compaq



## quinn (Feb 28, 2011)

I have used BSD in the past, so when I got a new Compaq Presario I tried installing 8.2.
I selected to use the entire drive all seemed to go without a problem until I did the boot after installation. Compaq has a partition that is used to reinstall Win 7, and can use recovery disks that again probably rely on the partition. On the boot I cannot get past the initial Compaq screen, can't get into bios or do F2, F10,or F11 to get to the bios. Also no sign of BSD booting. I am essentially hosed, cannot use my recovery disks to get back to Win 7, don't know the status of the bios. And HDD status unknown. Called Compaq service, tried to help but they are stumped. Any help greatly appreciated for my 3 week old laptop.

Quinn :\


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## SirDice (Feb 28, 2011)

What I know from the past is that Compaq uses a separate partition which houses it's "BIOS". By choosing the entire drive you've inadvertently hosed that partition.

You can restore it by downloading the floppies for it. At least that used to be the case 15 years ago.


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## quinn (Feb 28, 2011)

Bios is on the partition? Is that unusual, I thought it was separate from the HDD, but I guess Compaq has their own way.
Any idea where I could download the bios? I do appreciate your help, but I think I am up to a tough fix.
Thanks again
Quinn


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## SirDice (Feb 28, 2011)

quinn said:
			
		

> Bios is on the partition? Is that unusual, I thought it was separate from the HDD, but I guess Compaq has their own way.


Yeah, it was rather unusual.



> Any idea where I could download the bios?


I used to be able to get those SP fixes from their support website which is now HP/Compaq. Just go to http://www.hp.com and click on "Drivers & Support".


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## wblock@ (Feb 28, 2011)

It won't help in this case, but you should always, *yes always*, back up a Windows install before you mess with it, even if you're planning on blowing the whole thing away.  Clonezilla is good for that, or use Ghost or dd(8) or whatever you like.

There is more than one reason to do this: weird BIOS or drive partitioning schemes, restore partitions, BIOS or other updates may require Windows, installed software may not be available for download, future resale of the machine.  It gives you a fall-back position.


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## quinn (Mar 1, 2011)

Thanks for the help. I am going to try hp website. I did make full restore cd's which allows a restore back to factory default, but the problem is when I put the cd in the drive it won't read the drive and it does not allow me to boot into bios or any other recovery scheme. Appreciate any ideas including black magic or incantations.

Quinn


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## honk (Mar 1, 2011)

Recently I stumbled across this in the PC-BSD Wiki. It's about Thinkpads but maybe the same story. I would also try to wipe the disk completely. Can't imagine that a broken disk renders a Compaq to a brick.


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## wblock@ (Mar 1, 2011)

Aha, I knew something like this had come up before: Can install affect BIOS?


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## marthyr (Mar 2, 2011)

Hello,

BIOS on HDD makes no sense, that was used 15 years ago.

EFI could be supported by Sandy Bridge, at the moment sandy bridge has failures, there is no sandy bridge compatible motherboard 100% operational and reliable.

I am taking about PC (Personal Computer) architecture, I AM NOT TAKING ABOUT APPLES.

So at the moment You MUST be able to access your BIOS without using a hard disk, everything is in firmware.

Your firmware/BIOS could be damaged, but thats a different story.

IÂ´ve been having too many problems installing FreeBSD since the 7.2 version.

I have noted if your BIOS is configured to use SATA HDD in AHCI mode, your boot disk became corrupt, no matter how much time you spent waiting for booting you would be waiting a LONG LONG time.

First. Remove HDD, try to boot from dvd unit to see if your computer responds.

Second. Enter BIOS utility and change IF POSSIBLE to COMPATIBLE/IDE/EXTENDED, whatever option EXCEPT that already mentioned AHCI mode in SATA HDD Controller.

If changing BIOS is not an option, nor possibility to change sata mode, then use an HDD external case, another computer and do a fast erase according to your HDD manufacturer's utility, that utility could be downloaded from manufacturer site (hdd manufacturer), you'll just need to select your exact HDD model. Your MBR has been corrupted by FreeBSD loader. It would be blocking your Power On Self Test if you dont erase at least MBR.

Please give us computer model number, the one finishing with 2 characters, to be sure if you are using EFI or BIOS.


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## roddierod (Mar 2, 2011)

As SirDice said Compaq always put the BIOS on the HDD in a hidden partition. I've had at least 10 or 15 different Compaq machines in the last 15 years, although not a new one since HP bought them. Anyway, the used to call the BIOS disks ROMPaks or ROMpaqs - I forget the spelling.

Compaq are or used to be very proprietary machines and you had to buy Compaq branded memory for example, because the would move the notch in the memory just slightly so generic memory of the same type would not fit in there machines.


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## SirDice (Mar 2, 2011)

ROMpaq indeed :e Man, that was a long time ago. At the service center where I worked back then we had access to the Compaq Knowledge base (I used to be a Certified Compaq Engineer). Later on most of that stuff also became available via the web. But that was all long before the HP/Compaq merger.


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## DutchDaemon (Mar 2, 2011)

HP/Compaq don't do that, just to clear that up.


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## honk (Mar 3, 2011)

Just curious. Can someone tell my how to access the BIOS on a hard disk when a BIOS is needed to access a hard disk? I know that there are HP/Compaq machines out there which could be booted from another media (CD/DVD) to run tools which could be used to modify BIOS settings (e.g. enabling the "Press F10 to enter setup" message) or configure a RAID-controller with a graphical tool or to configure onboard NICs but I still can't believe that a computer is broken just because there is no hard disk available. What about removing the BIOS battery? Their might be other solutions to set BIOS settings to the default, but without having the specific type and model... I've also heared that HP uses EFI extensions in the last time. But these are extensions are not elementary functions required for booting. HP also states 





> The EFI partition and HP EFI applications and tools are not required for the basic operation of HP notebook computers. However, if the EFI partition or applications are missing, the EFI features described in this paper will not be available.


.


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## quinn (Mar 3, 2011)

Well, thanks to the forum I got the system back, albeit without 8.2. I followed the advice from another post in that I removed the sata HDD from the compaq put it into another laptop (Toshiba) and lo and behold it booted without a problem and there was 8.2. With the same hdd in the compaq it would not recognize the hdd even when I disconnected the hdd and booted the compaq. I was able to  get to  the bios and recovery options and with the recovery disks I made before all this happened and I was able to get to  different recovery options, but still would not recognize the hdd with 8.2 on it. So with the compaq hdd in the toshiba I installed a copy of win7, took it out of the toshiba back into the compaq and it recognized the hdd and was able to use recovery disks and get the compaq back to factory specs. 

But the crazy thing is when I put the hdd back into the compaq I did not initially plug the hdd back in, but I put in the recovery disks and it booted from the cd drive and copied windows files and started a reinstall of windows all without the hdd attached. I wondered where in the heck is it copying these files without a physicial hdd attached.

Well the moral of the story is, I guess I ain't really sure what the moral is, but I think I'll stick with build my own
and stay away from proprietary as much as possible. BTW I have had the same difficulty since 7.2 and probably it is because of all these proprietary systems.

But again thanks again to all the forum members who jumped in and helped, bsd software great the hardware we try to put it into - bah!!!

Quinn


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## SirDice (Mar 3, 2011)

honk said:
			
		

> Just curious. Can someone tell my how to access the BIOS on a hard disk when a BIOS is needed to access a hard disk?


Contrary to popular belief, the BIOS isn't needed to access a harddisk.


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## Beastie (Mar 3, 2011)

^ Indeed. All protected mode systems, i.e. anything newer than 20-year-old *DOS technology, use the BIOS' disk interrupt only in the very first stages of the bootloader (few millisec after POST). Any higher-level driver is just a series of in/out instruction calls to the disk controllers' "ports" and a lot of DMA and "buffering" code.

Those weird machines probably have very primitive disk code in ROM which in turn call more advanced code on the disk. That's just crap in my opinion.


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## phoenix (Mar 3, 2011)

But several Compaq system keep the BIOS management app in a hidden partition on the harddrive, or a floppy disk, making it next to impossible to work on the system without anything plugged into the motherboard.  Yes, you boot using whatever settings are in the BIOS.  But you couldn't get into the BIOS setup screens to change anything.  

These also tend to be the same systems that won't use PCI cards that aren't branded Compaq (like NICs).    And use weird riser cards for PCI slots so you can't plug anything directly into the motherboard.

We had a few of these way-back-in-the-day; a royal pain in the kiester to work with.  We stopped using them for workstations, and they were our firewall boxes (P2 333 Mhz) until they became the bottleneck on a 10 Mbps connection (multiple natd processes and ipfw rules would top out at around 7 Mbps combined throughput).


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