Compaq Armada 3500 wont boot past Compaq logo

[donjo13]

My Compaq Armada 3500 won't boot past COMPAQ logo. It wont boot to Floppy or CD and I cant enter BIOS to change any settings. I have 2 of these laptops (I bought them both used). My other one had the same similar problem when I got it, but I fixed by removing the cmos battery for 30 minutes and rebooting after I put it back in without the HD in the case. It told me error 162 options not set, and date and time had to be reset, and to hit F1 to save the settings. I did and rebooted. It booted to my floppy Win98 boot disk fine, and then I put in a COMPAQ setup for portables and a DIAG floppy and set it up to boot to multi boot. It runs like a charm now for its size.
But the other one will not accept any of these options although it does tell me the same message after I remove the CMOS battery and put it back in as I did the other one. But when I reboot, it still doesnt see the floppy, CDROM or let me boot to bios to enter setup. It just shows the COMPAQ logo and says "non system disk, remove the disk and hit a key when ready." I have removed the hard drive, removed the CD ROM, and removed the floppy on seperate occasions to see if any of them were the problem, but no change. I took the whole thing apart, and put it back together hoping something would end up being connected to the problem, but it still doesn't change the problem. Next to selling it for parts, any ideas? Its in great shape, has a nice 13 inch lcd and good floppy and cd-roms, and 192 ram.

COMPAQ Armada 3500
366 Mhz Intel P2
192MB PC100 Kingston SoDimm
6.4 GB HDD
expansion base w/subwoofer
floppy drive
cd-rom

 

[donjo13]

Nobody is willing to even guess?

 

[naleendw]

Same Problem

Hi, Im having the same problem with a armada 3500. any luck with your machine.

 

[Tmagic650]

CMOS chip may be "fried"... in other words you may have a bad motherboard on that Compaq Armada. You could try a new CMOS battery

 

[tifc8lraz]

Try another CMOS Battery in the laptop, maybe the battery is starting to die? What is the key you have to hit to be able to get into BIOS?

 

[magicdustlil]

hi

i had same problem with compaq presarios desktop series called ordered new cds to redo the system it wouldnt even read those it kept saying wrong cds for this system. called tech support they have no idea so they sent another set of cds still same thing .ifinally had to buy new windows xp cds format hard drive and reinstall the complete system simply removing compaq
works fine now on both hope this helps

 

[songbirdrose]

im having the same problems with mine compaq armada 3500 goes past compaq logo to a blank screen with a line blinking in left corner does nothing else and cant get in to bios

 

[Tmagic650]

So did you remove the CMOS battery for a few minutes?

 

[songbirdrose]

no i didnt im not sure where the battery is

 

[songbirdrose]

i did it no change