God help me, I'm trying to fix a Compaq!

[struggles]

I'm working on a Compaq Presario 520cds,(what a POS)! All I need to do is get Win95 on it so it can be used for internet surfing.I didnt f-disk or anything so the original partitions are still there,(I think the one is for their bios, hence I left it undisturbed). As I suspected, Win95 will not load properly. Loads of missing dll"s and vxd's.Anyone out there have a recovery cd that would work? Am I doing something wrong? I e-mailed Compaq about a week ago...........

[Ed_S]

I'll disagree, Toadman. Compaq does indeed place a portion of their bios info in a small partition, at least on many models. If so, it'll be a VERY small 1st partition. Will show up in fdisk as a "non-DOS" partition, and will be transparent to dos or Windows.
If this is what you've got don't delete it! It's no fun restoring it!

I've loaded Compaqs with a standard '95 CD before with few if any probs. Did you do this as an upgrade over something, or did you reformat?

[This message has been edited by Ed_S (edited 05-07-2001).]

[Toadman]

Sorry Ed. My compaq 2nd partition was all OS files so sorry to jump the gun. What BIOS/CPU/MOBO is your system struggles?

[Toadman]

Go ahead and F-disk/partition as you please then load Win95. The second OEM partition contained a full OS restore. No BIOS partition exists, afaik. You have a boot system disk with CDROM support(MSCDEX.exe), correct?

[struggles]

Thanks for the help guys.The first partition is indeed the system bios, which is why I left intact.The second partition I formatted and tried to load 95 right from the cd-rom as the HD is very small.Got about 20 missing files and no win.com. Thought for sure I needed recovery cd.

Tried different installation method. Copied cab files to HD and ran setup from win\opt\cab and I cant believe my eyes. The **** thing took it.Oh the joys of working with Compaq! Thanks for your help Ed_s!