Won't boot

[Dsherm112]

I picked up my daughter's Compaq Presario 5304 to try to get it operational. It would boot almost to windows, but freeze before the icons appeared.

I pulled the HD and put in another. Is there a way to install the hd as a slave or on the secondary ide to transfer data to another drive?

How do I get into bios on this machine. F1 and delete don't work. F8 takes you to safe mode etc.

Is there a site that provides troubleshooting info to enable me to diagnose and fix problems.

Thanks,

Sherm

 

[Hotsauce]

Hi Sherm,

According to Compaqs website you need to hit F10 to enter the bios. Click here to go to their support page for the 5300 series.

It looks as though there is a lot of good info there, sorry I couldn't be of more help, I don't know much about compaqs.

Hope this helps you.

Rob

 

[stool]

As it is booting almost to Windows, then freezing, it wouls appear to be something other than the HD. Sounds as if it is a software or device driver conflict somewhere in the Start Menu. Try to boot into Safe Mode(by pressing F8 during the system startup) and see if you are successful. If so, reboot, and hit F8, then select "Step-by-Step Confirmation" This can give you a good idea at what point your system is hanging. You should also check to see if any new software was installed that may have caused the problem.
As to the drives, as long as you have an open plug on your cable, you can configure the new drive as master, and the other as slave. Most times you will have trouble completely copying 1 whole drive to another without third-party software,

 

[LiGhTBoY]

Shame on you guys. What happened to THE forum rule ?

Well it is upon me (nice formal style isn't it? ) to say it:

WELCOME TO THE FORUMS Dsherm112.

As for your questions , I don't have any answer

 

[Hotsauce]

Ooooopps, My Bad!, but hey, I'm still new here too.

Welcome to the Forum Sherm.

As to the drives, as long as you have an open plug on your cable, you can configure the new drive as master, and the other as slave.

What stool is referring to is the hard drive jumpers.

Your hard drives should have a single jumper on one of its ends with about 4 possible positions where the jumper can be placed. Hopefully there is also a sticker or something to that effect on the hard drive that has the following on it.

"MA = Master (boot drive)" "SL = Slave" "CS = Cable select"

Just in case you didn't know.

 

[Gnufsh]

This sounds like a software problem. Before you change to a new HD, you should do some more troubleshooting. Start up in safe mode and undo the last changes to windows. Undo system setting changes and uninstall recent programs. Work backwards, undoing one thing at a time, until the problem is solved. If all else fails, re-install windows.

Hope this helps,

-Dan