new HD, boot from C: or A: only; help?!

Greetings:
Have a minor paradox going...have an old laptop, compaq Evo N610c. Bought a new hard drive which came formated with only command.com in c: directory. When I got to bios setup, it only allows boot choice, a: or c: Problem is the laptop does not have a floppy drive, only usb, cd-rom, serial, parallel, Ethernet and pcima ports.
Any ideas on how to get it to boot from cd-rom?
Thanks in advance.Yodel99

 

Sorry, I forgot to add that the bios is "EZ-BIOS", 9.06W, Micro House International.
thanks

 

I believe that you are confusing EZ-BIOS, a hard drive overlay program, with the computers actual bios setup. To get into the real bios to set boot order press the F10 key as soon as you see the Compaq logo on the screen. The boot order will be under the Advanced tab.

Some info on EZ-BIOS, http://www.tweakxp.com/article37168.aspx.

Hope this helps!

 

Thanks for the help!! Will give it a shot. Thanks, yodel99

 

Sort of curious about your new hard drive! Was this bought new ( as in boxed ) from a supplier? Only reason that I ask is that I find it strange that any new drive would be formatted with command.com being the only file on it.

 

The whole story is that here at work, the laptop was being thrown away (without an HD). I was allowed to take it home, thinking myself and son could tinker with it. I bought the HD on ebay, used for 40usd. So I popped it in, and it booted to C: with only command.com as a file. Interesting, right before it shows the dir, Win98 logo flashes by.....anyway, trying to get it running so the kids can type on it. Thanks again for your help. Yodel99

 

That was why I asked! In years past the EZ-Bios program was something that let earlier model computers work with hard drives past the bios capabilities/size and provided an overlay that communicated with the hard drive.

With XP this shouldn't be necessary, and I do have the same model notebook here with me.

If you are wanting to put XP on it, then I would either download the WD tools here, http://www.majorgeeks.com/Western_Digital_Data_Lifeguard_Tools_d2855.html. Or you could use this, http://majorgeeks.com/Dariks_Boot_and_Nuke_d4596.html. Both have the capability to write "0"'s to all sectors of the hard drive. This will effectively wipe out the EZ-Bios and let you install the operating system of your choice.

 

Awesome! Thanks a bunch!! Yodel99

 

You are welcome and let me know if you have any problems. :major

 

Hello, back again
I borrowed a 2.5 drive enclosure and now have access to the new laptop HD. I am figuring on putting the proper autoexec.bat, config.sys and device drivers for cd-rom, so I can load my OS from cd. I there a place here on the site, or a link indicating what these need to be? thanks again!!

 

All that you have to do is install the hard drive in the notebook. The CDROM is automatically recognized by the computer, so there is no need for CD drivers or the other files. Just set the boot order as I mentioned in an earlier post. Any OS installation disk that is bootable should work fine ( after boot order is set in bios ) and install itself on the hard drive.

 

Hi!
Well the confusing part is that when I put the new HD in the laptop, only c: is recognized. I cannot change the bios because it has a password that I do not know (got the laptop used). I'm going to try and load the win98 from my desktop into this HD.... Will let you know what happens this weekend. Thanks again!

 

Sorry, as I didn't know that your bios was password protected. As C: is the first boot device, assuming such from your post and that the hard drive has command.com on it, then "0"ing it with either of the two applications that I mentioned earlier would make the computer look to the other boot devices that are listed in bios.

In other words, formatting or zeroing the hard drive should make it appear to the bios as not being bootable, and then it would search for the next device that was, which would hopefully be your CD. Hope this helps!