re: can't enter bios
Wednesday, January 14, 2009 at 3:03 pm
Windows Me Annoyances Discussion Forum
Posted by Robbo
(1 messages posted)
I've been fiddling with an old Compaq Armada 1750 laptop now for about a week. It
had been formated which destroyed the diagnostics partition on the HDD. I searched
the internet all over the place, found information and files here and there to the
point where I now can set up the HDD with DIAGS partition (7Mb FAT) at the start
of the disk and look at the BIOS, but there is a BIOS password to prevent access
to saving settings. I have flashed the onboard BIOS ROM, set up the HDD and loaded
Win98 with all necessary drivers etc and all the Compaq software. I can access anything
EXCEPT the BIOS via f10 at boot to make changes. Damned password stops me. The boot
setup floppy works fine, just cannot save settings back to BIOS. I've even disconnected
the CMOS battery, allowed it to reset and re-done the DIAGS partition setup. Nothing
allows me into the press f10 to get into BIOS because I don't know the password.
Just access by floppy setup disk. This is really frustrating, but the laptop works
fine so I'll just put Linux on it as the Compaq software is pointless without full
access to BIOS. I get a conflict with the PCMCIA port and cannot resolve it via BIOS
without saving the BIOS changes, so cannot get Win98 to run the wireless card.
BTW, the Fn, F8, F11 key combo at boot just re-sets the BIOS to default settings
and allows you to save or ignore the checksum condition it finds, but does nothing
to remove the BIOS password.
I tried a number of tiny Linux distros, so far DSL 4.4.10 runs best on it. Partition
the HDD (without removing the DIAGS partition) to Ext2, also make a Linux swap partition
at the end of the disk. I use 298Mb for it. You boot to the CD and then install to
HDD. It will find the swap on re-boot to HDD. Using Lilo bootloader works best with
it. It takes all of half an hour to be partitioned and running, whereas windows 98
can take you a week of stuffing around and it's not secure for the internet anyway:~)
Partition magic pro does the job fantastic. Find it on Hirens boot cd 9.7
- Written in response to:
- re: can't enter bios (Ed: Friday, January 2, 2009 at 10:29 am)
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All messages in this thread [show all]
 | | | | |  | |  | Linux (pieter: Wed, Apr 19, 2006, 1:21 am) |
| | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | |  | re: can't enter bios (Robbo: Wed, Jan 14, 2009, 3:03 pm) |
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