A friend has brought her old Compaq Presario 9546 over to see if I could get
it running.  It had been fine at the time (2 months ago) she bought a new PC
to replace it - I personally used a direct cable connection to copy some of
her old docs onto the new machine. . . the Presario was running fine.  Since
we copied the files, she has had the Presario stored away.

She recently  got a second monitor and decided to use her old Presario for a
second
computer for her kids.

BUT...

On power on, the memory counts up then leaves her at
a blinking cursor ... that's it.  Attempting to boot from the A drive
results in the SAME blinking cursor under the memory count, right after the
drive lights and I hear it being queried (read from).

Note: On power on, I  briefly hear the hard drive, see all drive LEDs light,
but don't get to any beeps.

There is no ability to get to setup, just the blinking cursor after the
memory count. I can download a setup from Compaq to run off diskette, but
obviously
this is useless without the ability to boot from the A drive.   :(

Any advise would be most welcome!  Another helpful person has suggested
corrosion as the cause,  and that I remove and reseat all adapter boards and
cables, then remove RAM and clean the contacts with an eraser.  (Fast Page
with tinned contacts, as specified for this model, are installed.)

TIA,

D'


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                       Deirdre Wall
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