Re: Packard Hell

Dr.H@l0nf1r£$ wrote:
Oh I do love Packard Bell. :

I'm working on an old Packerd Bell box that has been renovated previously by persons unknown, running a 1 gig Celeron. I've tried every way possible to install XP on it but it just refuses to install; and the only other o/s I have is Win 95 - which XP refuses to upgrade.

What happens is XP copies all the files to the HD and reboots the computer. Whether or not I press esc at the Compaq screen to initiate POST, the machine says

"Non-system disk or disk error. Replace and strike any key"

- Even if there isn't a floppy in the drive, even, in fact, if the floppy drive isn't connected at all. It does this whether the drive's formatted in FAT32 or NTFS. On pressing a key when there's no floppy in the drive it says that it's searching CD-ROM for boot information and starts loading Windows from the CD all over again. If I insert a Win 98 Boot Disk it reads it and goes into dos A prompt. If I go to another valid root directory, no matter which, and type "setup" it tells me that this program can't be run in dos.

The strange thing is that it had a pirate copy of XP on it when I got it. Since I'm supposed to be doing it up for a friend I backed up the C: drive after installing new drivers, updating the o/s with as many patches as M$ would let me have, and testing it all out. After backing up the HD failed so I cahnged it and intended to replace the installation and restore the backup. - I can't get XP on it though. : Does anyone have any ideas as to what's going on? Has the mobo gone tits up?


All early Packard Bells I've played with have had a hidden partition.
I'd do a low level format including an FDISK/MBR instruction to clear it.
.

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