Yes, "Duh" if you don't have the driver set, an OS disk & valid key, don't do the work. That said, kill that little Compaq partition on some models (maybe only circa < 2000, haven't worked on a new one) and loose access to the BIOS setup. May not keep you from booting via HDD (since BIOS reset jumper fixes that much) but it will keep you from getting in and changing anything in the BIOS.
"This is a CD, CD's contain DATA. DATA is...." You do realize Chuck that most of us here have been doing this as long or longer than you, right? Even those of us that haven't probably could get by with the abridged version less the sermon and a bit of FUD. You are not lost of the CD does not boot. There are other ways of getting initial XP install on a HDD w/o being able to boot a CD in the target system. As for the Dell guy, all they would do is use the Dell restore CD to revert it back to shipping state or they would ship the unit back to Dell if it needed more than could be swapped on site. Compaq of course would say "ship it back or buy a new PC". [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: > > ----- Original Message ----- From: "Ben Ruset" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> > To: "The Hardware List" <hardware@hardwaregroup.com> > Sent: Friday, June 01, 2007 6:32 PM > Subject: Re: [H] Compaq hidden partition > > >> >> That is assuming, of course, that Ghost won't freak out with the crazy >> partition. >> > > I do not want to sound like a "know it all" here but it would be a > disservice to not inform y'all that I have 10 years of experience in > this area. What area? Specifically in cleaning off hard drives on name > brand computers and doing clean installs. > <snip> ____________________________________________________________________________________ Get the Yahoo! toolbar and be alerted to new email wherever you're surfing. http://new.toolbar.yahoo.com/toolbar/features/mail/index.php