I'm looking at a re-certified Compaq Presario laptop. Of course, it comes loaded with bloatware and Win. Obviously, that would all have to come off.

In researching the model (CQ62-238DX NoteBook), I've found conflicting information. A few postings have said that Compaq puts a hidden identifier for the HD into the MB BIOS. If you try to re-format or change the HD, the computer says that it can't find a HD. The reported purpose is to frustrate people like me.

Other postings however, have made no mention of such a situation and describe a straightforward reformatting process.

Can anyone clear this up for me?

Thanks for any help that you can provide.

Sounds a bit dubious to me. I can't imagine that HP would get away with selling a laptop which effectively became useless if the hard disk failed and you had to replace it!

Play Bonny!

If they do, it may be to keep people from removing WIN and the bloatware. Maybe a factor in what they pay for their installation licences? Who knows?

I can not find any links at the moment but I believe this is a true fact. AFAIK it will not prevent one from installing an operating system of choice but only is a problem if it has to be replaced.

Hi.

I lived the experience when I formatted a Compaq Presario C305LA cause a general OS failure (ooops, I touched what I shouldn't). It wasn't possible to reinstall Win#$@&%% A very small hard drive partition had a specific manufacturer driver. Then, Win#&¿%&° installation process didn't recognize hard disk. Rest was a real torture (finding an USB 1.44 diskette drive to feed the driver downloaded from Compaq webpage during Win&%%$#@ installation among others) and many friends help and many tries later, installation failed at all. I gave up

Then I installed gutsy gibbon, a gift from a friend, met Linux and started non stop and trouble free computing till today.