I just purchased yesterday a
Compaq Presario laptop 12XL126 and started my
Compaq laptop ritual of de-compaqqing the laptop. This involves blowing away the extra 1.33 GB
partition used for
system recovery. I was not concerned because as like my other previous 1200 series
Presario laptop, this new
Presario had a system recovery CD that would put it OS back the way I found it.
No worries man. So I disabled all those weird
Compaq startup programs. I uninstalled all those strange Compaq programs you wonder what they do. I upgraded the laptop to WinME to be fully modern with the times and all (the laptop came preloaded with WIN98SE).
Well I decided that
Windows ME was NOT for that laptop after all. Strange
driver issues with my NIC and weird system .dll screwups started happening. hmmmmm. So I blew away the primary
partition with Windows on it to restore
the computer (still confident the
restore CD would magically put it all back like my old
Presario) and lo and behold the restore CD tells me that I cannot restore my system as the d: partition with the restore stuff is
missing. There is only 2.9MB of boot stuff on the "
EMERGENCY RECOVERY CD" itself. No way around it. Could probably get
Linux on it if I wanted
wanted. Not even drivers on the
Compaq site to say load up your own version of Windows if you wanted. I was apparently not supposed to get rid of that
second
partition if I wanted to keep a copy of my OS.
(sigh)
So I emailed
Compaq and they told me what to do.There is a solution.
(
patience)
For FREE (plus shipping and the obviously monetarily worthless time I will spend on hold) I can call
Compaq M-F 7-7 at 1-800-841-2761 (option 3) and order (drum roll please) FOR FREE the "RESTORE CD" and this will really load
the system back on the laptop as this CD actually has drivers and an Windows and those other good
Compaq things on it.
So right now it is as useful as a rock. It says, "
operating system not found." I didn't read the instructions until it was too late.
I think I will load up
Redhat 7.0 on it while I wait for them to send me the
operating system.