odd bios problem

Hello, ive been having a problem with my bios, at first i Thought it was my HD but now that ive switched HD's its definitely bios, what happens is every once in awhile it won't boot, it gives me the non system disk error mostly and sometimes it half-boots only to crash with a windows protection error, i can fix it each time easily enough by pulling out the battery to reset bios but i was wondering if anyone knew what might be causing this each time ?

Thanks

Dave

 

It may be a bug in it's programming, have you searched for a new revision of your BIOS?

 

wouldnt have the first clue how, would i need to get that from compaq?

 

If you got a compaq, then sure. What's the model number of your machine?

 

its a compaq presario 7462 (first and last compaq ill ever buy)

 

If you do decide to attempt updating your BIOS, be careful. Make sure you read and understand everything you're about to do. If at all possible, see if you can download your current BIOS onto a floppy for a backup.

 

Unfortunately I don't see a new BIOS available for download :\
http://h10025.www1.hp.com/ewfrf/wc/softwareCategory?product=94479&os=228&lang=en&lc=en&cc=us&dlc=en&

 

Just another angle, have you tried replacing the cable going to your hard disk?

Just a thought. However if there is a BIOS upgrade for your system, you should go ahead and do that, just follow the manufacturers instructions very carefully and closely.

 

ive been switching the HD back and forth between different cables and it does it to each cable, before i installed windows, it would have the same problem when i just had dos in there, i'd type dir on the cd rom and it would come up half the time with the list of files, and the other half with no files found. i took out the battery and put it back and it worked fine for like a week, now i have to reset it at least once a day.

 

Did we confirm that there was no BIOS update geeks?

I am also concerned this could be hardware, perhaps the onboard IDE is bad. Try this, temporarily anyway. I assume you have a primary and secondary IDE, unplug the CD-ROM and plug your HD into the secondary, see what happens.
Or/And, plug the CD-ROM into the primary, boot from a floppy with CD-ROM support and see how many times it recognizes it.

 

tried it. im switching back/forth from controllors, i actually found a bios update from compaq just need to get a blank disk to try it out, but im leaning towards hardware problem myself . crossing my fingers


thanks for the help
dave

 

nope didnt work, still same problem, sound like i need a new computer or anyone have any ideas?