hard drive help please

[Ponch]

NTLDR missing does not necessarilly mean that the drive i not recognized. Did you check the jumper settings ?

+Bios update is not an "option" in Setup, it is the replacement of the whole Setup program. You should find a download on Compaq.com for your specific model (very important) that lets you create one or 2 diskettes with explanations on "how to". Most the time, you boot from a diskette and launch a command that refers to a .bin file. That file overwrites your Bios wit a new version.

Quite the contrary.

"NTLDR is missing" means the drive is partitioned and working, only it was formatted with NT (and likely NTFS) so it contains the standard NT bootsector which looks for and loads NTLDR. If it was formatted in DOS/9x, the similar message would be "Invalid system disk.\nReplace the disk, and then press any key."

Recommendation: Repartition with FDISK and format with FORMAT.

hum... he is just doing a test with an other comp's HDD, so it would not be a good idea to repartition and format.