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mistyholly

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Cannot access floppy disk "A" , CD ROM drive, or Hard Drive!

I need help with finding an emergency boot disk that will give me access to the one of the Drives in this Compaq Presario 5240.  I have a Recovery CD but that cannot help me if I can't access it.  I turn it on and I receive these error messages, "162-System Options not set and "Missing operating system".
I don't understand what I did to get to this point.   I have checked with Compaq and they will not give any boot diskettes.  I think this is what I need, but I don't know where to get one.  Would appreciate any help.  If this is not the problem, could someone please help?
 
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CrazyOne
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Get a Win98 floppy boot disk from www.bootdisk.com
http://www.uktsupport.co.uk/compaq/faq/comppost.htm
162 - System Options Error 2 short No Disk Drive or Disk Failure Run Computer Setup
162 - System Options Not Set 2 short Configuration Incorrect Run Computer Setup
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aspbahamas

sounds like a bad hard drive, or hard drive failure. if thats a 400 MHz computer, your best bet is to buy a new computer, you can get them now for $379 TigerDirect.com. Put your hard drive from this old PC in the new one as a 2nd drive, to get your information off, if it can read.

By the way, what OS does it have?? Win98 or 2000??

win98 will let you create a boot up disk. So will winMe. Im not sure about win2000. Once you get a boot floppy, you can check in DOS to see if the hard drive is being read.

If you can get into the BIOS, you can see first if the Motherboard is actually seeing the hard Drive. If it is then, You may also just have a loose data cable connection, try banging the PC! Really, ive seen that once or twice, best to actually go inside and take the HD Cable off and put back on. Or it can just be starting to go bad.

If you dont see the hard drive in the bios, then its not seeing it at all. Check the power cable inside the PC, try switching it with the CDROM power Cable or another. If you have a meter check there is voltage. If there is power, and the mother board bios still doesnt see it, need a new hard drive, and with a 400Mhz PC, best to buy a completely new PC alltogether.

Rory
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CrazyOne
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CrazyOne gave me a lot of info on what I needed.  The websites that were referred to me gave me a lot of help.  The other answers cannot help if you cannot access anything on your computer.   I was informed from one of the other websites that CrazyOne referred to, that was to remove my battery, and voila I had access to my computer again.  I now have another problem which I will post in a few minutes. Thanks CrazyOne.
mistyholly
you have a battery on a desktop PC?? !
!
>>>you have a battery on a desktop PC?? !

Yes most desktops use a battery so when the system power is turned off the CMOS doesn't loose its settings and the clock doesn't loose time.
oh you mean the litium battery, that normally doesnt cause a problems except for a checksum or date/time ussue, then again compaqs are terrible machines anyway so who knows!