I am taking a self tought linux course in school, and the school gave me a old laptop to use (Compaq, I'd say maybe around 400Mhz) Anyways, I formatted the drive yesterday, and I wanted to throw Linux on it So the thing is, I can't get into bios, it posts for half a second, I've tried all the key combonations and It just says invalad system disk (I need bios to tell it to boot from CD) Anyways here's the problem I have ... I put a boot disk in there, and I can then command prompt my way into the linux disk, I've looked through the entire disk, but I CANT FIND AN INSTALL anyone have any idea how to install linux from a command promt ... I have the Ubuntu (Debian) Distro

no, you haven't... you didn't get into the bios, did you? try looking on their website, or calling them -- they were notorious for using non-standard keys.

it's not like win98 -- there is no setup.exe
you need to boot from the disk. it will probably load an iso linux build containing the install process.

if you can't get the bios thing figgured out, try using another boot disk (i assume a floppy) which lets you choose which medium to boot from. bootdisk.com might have one, but i haven't checked. **i've heard rumors these things exist, but never had/used one...

I think the key to enter the BIOS for compaq is F10.

the other problem with old compaqs is that they liked to change the key (combination) for entering the bios...

I've heard that in Compaq the bios is located on the hard drive. If you formatted the hd you lost the bios, according to that information.

what?! you must be joking.

Hello, Well it was a real pain in the rear, it turns out, you were right, the bios IS stored on the now formatted hd. Which is incredibly stupid. So I had to go to compau's web and download the bios and extract it to the c: (again stupid) anyways then I told it to boot from cd and it works 100% Thanks for all the help
Matt

BIOS on the HD, that's the most retarded thing i've ever heard. yet another reason i think compaq is stupid.

OMIGOD!!!! bios on the hdd?? ur right secesh that is retarded!! but in all fairness not all compaqs suck... i have an evo and i'm WELL happy w/ it.

er... toshiba bios config is also in hdd....

why would anyone at compaq think that was a good idea?

they must had their reasons, smaller hardware, easier to upgrade, cheaper computers...

Maybe Compaq and Toshiba think that they can pull down the prices by saving a chip and their users are happy with pre-installed xp and never want to format or repartition. Oh well. Boycott them.

Any other makes who use this bios configuration?

You need the setup diskette from compaq. Get it from the HP support webpage. Go to the Support and Driver section and look under your model.

Regards,
Ed

Well while it is retarded, it is not actually the bios on the HDD. It is the bios config utility that is on the HDD. However, I agree this was not an intelligent thing to do.