Problem getting to BIOS

[George Hester]

I inherited a P1 machine a Compaq Deskpro 2000. It's not bad I upgraded the BIOS to the latest level and so it sees 60GB correctly. Trouble is I cannot set boot order. There is no BIOS. Compaq says it is F10 but it is not. The screen at boot shows nothing but a Post check and that is it. I can run what looks similar to the BIOS from a floppy but there is no boot order there. Anyone have any experience with this no-BIOS issue maybe suggest a fix? Like is the BIOS available from a switch on the Motherboard?

http://h18007.www1.hp.com/support/files/deskpro/us/locate/20_63.html

 

[Dan Seur]

George, perhaps this article will help; found the webref posted in
answer to a ques similar to yours, also in re deskpro 2000.

<http://www.pcuser.com.au/pcuser/hs2.nsf/web/723171C3DD82D725CA256E6D003D7A2D>

About Compaq in general I have nothing nice to say.

 

[Pegasus \(MVP\)]

I inherited a P1 machine a Compaq Deskpro 2000. It's not bad I upgraded the
BIOS to the latest level and so it sees 60GB correctly. Trouble is I cannot
set boot order. There is no BIOS. Compaq says it is F10 but it is not.
The screen at boot shows nothing but a Post check and that is it. I can run
what looks similar to the BIOS from a floppy but there is no boot order
there. Anyone have any experience with this no-BIOS issue maybe suggest a
fix? Like is the BIOS available from a switch on the Motherboard?

http://h18007.www1.hp.com/support/files/deskpro/us/locate/20_63.html

--
George Hester
_______________________________


It's a strange coincidence that you should raise this issue, because
it is strongly related to our other discussion about multi-booting
etc. It just so happens that XOSL offers facilities to boot from
any disk device: Hard disk, floppy disk, CD ROM. I have
successfully used it to boot with a CD ROM on machine that
refused to do it the normal way round, with the BIOS.

If you intend to use XOSL then I recommend a practice
session on a spare disk, to reduce the risk of overwriting
an existing partition by mistake.

 

[Jetro]

Old Compaqs EEPROM was/is manageable from special diskette set (softPaqs)
only. If you change hardware configuration you must use this set and
reprogram the BIOS. OTOH, if the link you provided is right for your
particular model, did you install the firmware *F10 Setup and Personal
Computer Diagnostics*?

 

[George Hester]

Hi Dan thanks for that. This machine has to be turned off manually it is too old for Windows 2000 to shut it down like my other COMPAQ. But when I turn it on first thig that happens is the Post saying memory is fine. At that point there is a blank screen before something happens. It had Windows 95 on it so it would say Starting Windows 95... The time frame here is like 1 sec. And with Windows 2000 I don't even know if there is a gap.

Now that article seemed to give a few suggestions on how to access the BIOS and I will try everyone. Don't need to just yet but I will when I get a chance to remove it from the Network. It is loading CD-ROM first I'd prefer Floppy so other than that it is doing pretty well. Except for that 33.6Kbs Modem. I don't use it but Windows 2000 didn't load drivers for it. Windows 95 did and so did the upgrade to Windows 2000. But not a clean install of Windows 2000.

 

[George Hester]

Yes it is not an install. It is just accessing the BIOS from a floppy. It installs nothing and yes that is the EXACT machine.