Compaq is evil!!!!!!

[Ice-9]

Just need to vent a little, sorry about that but I must be cursed or something like that.

A few years ago I bought my son a Presario 7950 (yeah I know but it was a real bargain at work so I just went with it), it had Win98 pre-installed.
6 months ago Win98 started to act funny (what a surprise!), and since all my kids do on that pc is play games ranging from Freddy Fish to Need For Speed, I installed Win2K.

Suddenly last week both the dvd drive and the cd-rw on IDE2 switched to Pio only and were impossible to switch back to UDMA, not even in the Bios.
Tried all sorts of things like putting them on IDE1, trying a brand new drive .....
I did a little research and found a Bios update on a Compaq support site which had that problem listed as fixed with the update.
I thought "cool, Compaq isn't that bad after all), boy was I wrong!!!!!!

I download the "fix" flash the Bios, everything ok, and then a message pops up
"Update succesful hit enter to reboot, if the pc doesn't reboot switch power off and then on"

It didn't reboot, and in fact it still doesn't.
I tried resetting Cmos, removing the battery and wait, nothing helps.
I asked Compaq people at work and all they can say is "Sorry the file was probably corrupt you're gonna have to buy a new motherboard"?
Well the board would cost me 450 USD, like twice what I paid for the whole damned thing!!!!
Compaq is Evil, it wouldn't surprise me if the big boss had family ties with Bill Gates!

Ok, I'm finished now, I'm gonna remove all the parts I can still use and put them in another box.

[KernelPanic]

Some where near your cmos battery there will be two pins with a jumper briding them. Remove this jumper and flick the PC's power on ond off very briefly (like 1 second) Replace the jumper back to where it was. Try and boot the PC.
The BIOS should now be back to factory settings.

[KernelPanic]

Actually I thinks it is 3 pins, with a jumper joining two. If this is the case move it so that it covers the other two.

This is off the top of my head though. Check you motherboard manual (should be on compaq's site) or just work it out by looking at the board.

Hope you get your system back.

[Ice-9]

Did that already, didn't work.
What I found that I could do is have the chip re-flashed, I found a website in Holland with an address and all, but as the guy states :
E-mail before sending me Compaq, IBM or Dell pats since these are trouble-brands!

I told you I must be cursed  
I already removed all the usable parts out of it and first thing tomorrow morning I'm gonna trash that ugly box!

[KernelPanic]

Sorry to hear that, I guess shit happens.

[Ice-9]

Thanks, but it's not really a problem anymore now that I'm over it.
Good thing that we have something like the 13th month paycheck in Belgium though  

[choasforages]

ermmm, how about sending that mother board my way/*wait your in belgium, id have to get it past the border gestopo*/

[Ice-9]

"border gestapo"
it probably would be kind of expensive to send it over, otherwise I would ship it together with The AMD K7 650 and the 256MB of PC100 memory, nothing I can do with it anymore anyway since these are Compaq proprietary parts (except for the AMD but I'm not really an AMD fan)

[choasforages]

quote:I would ship it together with The AMD K7 650 and the 256MB of PC100  

how much??? ill go ask my dad how much it costs to ship

[Ice-9]

You could have it for free, but it probably would be cheaper for you to search second hand stores than have me shipping it you know!

[choasforages]

how much you think the mb, ram and proc weigh, ill go look it up on the usps and maybe ups site.

[choasforages]

hey man, check your PM