Boot issue ok i have seen this all over the place it apears that the compaq laptops do this often... I have yet to find a useful answer... ok my laptop says on boot... 1782 Disk Controller Faillure then after that it says.... Non-system Disk or disk error now i know that it is not the hdd because i have tested it in another laptop. From what i have read it is a BIOS error... more spacificly a CMOS error... I have reset the CMOS by removing the RTC and that did nothing. I I even removed all of the media divices on the laptop. IE the modem and the CDrom. I really need to get this laptop up and running i need it for school.... if any one could help i would really apriceat it....

Okay, First of all, it would be very helpful if you could include the Operating System you are running, AND what is the size/type of your Hard Drive? There's a couple ways to look at this. Did you by chance check the Floppy Drive for a disk in there? I See you showed you had checked the cd-rom drive, but said nothing about a floppy (FDD) drive. SO please check there too. If that's empty, we'll go on from there and attempt getting into your BIOS. Any CMOS issues there can be resolved in the BIOS Setup. It's also possible that the controller isn't setup or is configured wrong in the BIOS. When you power-on your Compaq Notebook, press and hold the F10 button, until you see the screen "Bios Loading" (or something to that effect). If you are able to get to the BIOS Screen, you may be in luck. The Standard CMOS Features are divided into 11 categories. First check to see if the hard drive (Primary Master) is recognized. Arroe down to that, if not. On the "Primary Master", press the enter key. Is your hard drive present there? If so, you're 1/2 way there...if NO hard drive is present, you'll need to get your system to (hopefully) recognize it by setting the Prinary Disk to "Auto" and press Enter, and your system should then recognize your drive. If not, it may be that your drive is too large for the CMOS/BIOS to recognize. If all else fails, press F7, which SHOULD load the BIOS Setup Defaults. You may want to go back into the BIOS then, and set your date/time settings before exiting from your BIOS. Once all that's done, press F10 to Save, then press "ESC" to exit, then the system will reboot...and HOPEFULLY this will work. If you need more help, feel freee to contect me at my email address, so we can get more things done faster, rather then waiting and reposting on this website =) My email address is: [email protected] Thanks!!

Yes it's the disk controller thats at fault, you would need to check the controller, but if it wont boot you cant do that, so all as you can do at this point is look for a clr cmos, but not the battery as that doesnt always clear the cmos settings it will be a 2 or 3 pin terminal JBAT1 or CLRRTC or CLRCMOS which will need to be shorted. If you get into the bios after the clear cmos then you may have to check the drive is recognised in the ide o HDD section, if not, flash the bios which in its self is a last resort fix. Failing that the motherboard bus controller itself as in hardware may be damaged and only a mobo replacment will solve that.