Important note below:

>I have never worked with the 9600 series, but I can tell you that this is a
>sour pickle.  Bob is right that you press F10 when the cursor appears in the
>upper right-hand corner, but what you haven't mentioned is whether or not
>your are replacing the primary drive, or adding a secondary drive.  If you
>are adding a secondary drive then pressing F10 on boot will work and you
>should be able to do as you need to in the BIOS.
>
>If, however, you are replacing the primary drive, here is what you need to
>do.  Put the old drive back in the system as the primary drive by itself.
>Boot the system and get into the BIOS by pressing F10 when the cursor
>appears in the upper right-hand corner.  The first screen in the BIOS should
>give you the option to make configuration diskettes.  Scroll down and select
>this option.  You will need anywhere from two to five floppy disks.  Follow
>the instructions for making the configuration diskettes.
>
>After you make the diskettes, remove the old hard drive and put in the new
>hard drive by itself.  

Here's the important note:  After you install the new drive, the Compaq 
Diagnostic partition needs to be created FIRST since it needs to be at the
begining of the drive.  After you create the diag partition and load the 
setup disks you can boot you win9x and fdisk the drive to put the primary
DOS partition.  I've done this many, many times with Deskpro's.

>Boot using a Win95/Win98/Win2000 floppy.  Fdisk the
>drive but do not format it.  Next, boot using the first of the configuration
>diskettes that you created.  In the configuration program create a
>diagnostic partition on the new drive (there should be an option for this as
>well).  Now, reboot using a Win95/etc. floppy again and format the new
>drive.  You can now install your favorite operating system.
>
>Is this a pain in the glutes:  You Bet!!  Is this the only way to do it:
>You Bet!!  The only other option would be to download the ROMPaq from the
>Compaq web site using another computer to create the configuration diskettes
>from there.  The steps you have to take with the new hard drive won't
>change.
>
>Good Luck!
>
>Kyle Elmblade
>
>From: "Bob Wright" <[log in to unmask]> 
>Sent: Friday, September 01, 2000 10:19 AM
>Subject: Re: [PCBUILD] COMPAQ BIOS
>
>
>> At 08:40 AM 09/01/2000 , you wrote:
>> >How do I go about getting into the BIOS of a COMPAQ Presario 9600
>series???
>> >
>> >I was working on a friend's computer the other night, installing a HD,
>and
>> >the only time it came up was when It didn't recognize the HD.
>>
>>
>> I believe you Press F10 when the little square moves to the
>> top RH corner of screen during the post phase.
>>
>>     Bob Wright
>> The NOSPIN Group

- Wayne Copeland

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