Hi

I recently bought a Compaq 5100 laptop and I finally have a used hard drive for it.

Before I installed the hard drive, the laptop would boot off a floppy into DOS using ram. After installing the hard drive I got a suprise when it locked up on the first screen. I cant access the bios ethier by pressing F10 or Fn F11, It did check for a floppy though and it will try to read off it if you put one in (but does nothing still).

So I've come to the conclusion that the previous owner has deleted the MBR off the hard drive as well as everything else. Is there a way of creating a MBR from a floppy? Or any other sugestions?

Thanks

What make and model is the hard drive? Have you set the jumper correctly? Are you saying that with the hard drive installed it will boot from the floppy?

The hard drive is a standard compaq laptop hard drive so it just clicks into the slot. With the hard drive
installed it will not boot from the floppy but it will check for one on the POST screen ( I think it wants a
new or backup Master Boot Record).

Is the hard drive recognized in the bios?

Unfortunately after installing the hard drive I cant get into it.

Is there a jumper on it? Is it jumpered correctly? Have you tried to boot from your operating system CD. The OS creates the MBR.

There are no beeps on the first screen and it hangs there. I have just noticed at the top of the screen there is and error code: 24576.

Does anyone know what this error code means?

Knowing this is a 5100 Series laptop is not enough info to effectively diagnose this problem. What is the model number?

Where did this hard drive come from?

Compaq LTE 5100. I think there might be something wrong with the hard drive as when I take it out everything returns to working order. It was taken out from an compaq armada laptop with a defective power supply.

Seems to fit fine though.

You can find the Manual for that laptop here. On page 41 it says:



Do you have that Diagnostics diskette? If not you can get it here. You will need to create the floppies (2) on another computer. This is a Setup and Diagnostic program that may be neccessary to install the hard drive. Don't you just love Compaqs? They have a whole different way of doing things.

Let us know how you make out.

Not that I've had the same problem as you have, but i own a presario 2500 notebook that ive had a good amount of problems with (i love compaqs to)

Anyways, the compaq/hp live chat support has been really good I must admit, and they never have asked me for warranty info etc.

where its a compaq they might help you with getting that hard drive up and running, obviously would have to access it from a working computer and they are pretty good at step by step support

hope this helps

this link might be useful if you wanted to try it

http://h20180.www2.hp.com/apps/Nav?h_paget...-2&h_page=hpcom

Thankyou everyone for your posts.

Every time the computer scans for the hard drive it freezes. I had a look inside the hard drive caddy ( I'm very new to this sort of thing) I found a 2.5" 5GB IBM thinkpad option "Model:DADA-25120" hard drive. There is a converter cable going from the hard drive to the caddies plug. But four pins aren't joined to anything, does this affect it's working?

Hopefully I wont need another hard drive