Topic: Help Compact LTE 5280

[glenda5706]

I am begging for help please...I know nothing about laptops and someone gave me a Compaq LTE 5280. When turned on, it gives you the option of F10 which accesses the hardware setup. If F10 is not chosen it asks for a boot disk. I made one and now can get to the A prompt but that is it. It won't let me change to another drive. If I ask it the dir it just tells me the files on the boot disk. It does this on either of the hard drives that came with it. It has the floppy and CD components but only one can go in at a time. I don't know what is on the hard drive except the BIOS it shows when turned on. It does nothing when I put in a Windows 95 or 98 installation disk. So what do I need to do or buy to get this baby going? Thanks for any insight. :'(

[Serenity]

Hi Glenda    One of our resident "techies" should be along shortly to help you with this problem, usually around 1pm, in the meantime can you let us know what operating system you are using  

[DJ]

let us know what operating system you are using  

  Looks like there isn't an operating system on it.

If you have a full version of a windows CD you may be able to boot straight from that and install windows.  Just stick it in and reboot the computer.  If this doesn't work you may need to get the drivers for the CDRom first.

Did the laptop come with any driver CDs / Disks ?

DJ

[Sandra]

Hi Glenda, if it wont let you change directory it sounds like a hard drive problem.
I assume that you made a 98 boot disk, if so can you run FDISK at the A prompt, that will tell you which size and how many partitions, if any are on the hard drive.
Can you get it to start up in Safe Mode by pressing F8 repeatedly as it boots up ?
Do you know which OS it had on when it was being used by the person who gave it to you ?
I am wondering if it was on 2K or XP or something using an NTFS formatted drive, that would prevent you being able to put 95 or 98 on as they will only be able to use FAT 16 or FAT 32 formatted drives