Just throwing this out in case someone can help
I have a Compaq Presario 5461 and when the hard drive crashed I got a new hard drive off ebay (same model the pc came with). When I try to use the compaq restore disk, i get an error that pretty much says restore can't be run on that machine. I realize that these restore disks are somehow keyed to the machine so you can't use them on another machine, but all the hardware is the same except for a little more memory. Only thing I can think of is a bios update that I applied. Did that alter the "signature" of the PC. If so, would it work if I backed of the bios update?
At this point the pc is just a toy, i'm using it to learn more about hardware, etc. I was able to install windows and just used my license key that came with the computer, so thats not an issue. But it bugs me that I can't get this restore to work. I did also notice that PC does not have an asset tag - wondering if the bios update zapped that.
Other notes - there was no extra partition that I know of on the orig hard drive, and there is only one restore CD (no diskette). I was able to do a restore of the pc several years ago
so I am pretty sure the disk is not defective.
Any help or thoughts would be appreciated
I have a Compaq Presario 5461 and when the hard drive crashed I got a new hard drive off ebay (same model the pc came with). When I try to use the compaq restore disk, i get an error that pretty much says restore can't be run on that machine. I realize that these restore disks are somehow keyed to the machine so you can't use them on another machine, but all the hardware is the same except for a little more memory. Only thing I can think of is a bios update that I applied. Did that alter the "signature" of the PC. If so, would it work if I backed of the bios update?
At this point the pc is just a toy, i'm using it to learn more about hardware, etc. I was able to install windows and just used my license key that came with the computer, so thats not an issue. But it bugs me that I can't get this restore to work. I did also notice that PC does not have an asset tag - wondering if the bios update zapped that.
Other notes - there was no extra partition that I know of on the orig hard drive, and there is only one restore CD (no diskette). I was able to do a restore of the pc several years ago
so I am pretty sure the disk is not defective.
Any help or thoughts would be appreciated