My Compaq Presario 5716 is out of warranty and I tried fixing a hard drive problem but I erased both partitions and now I can't get the System Recovery/Restore CDs to work. I get a 'runtime error 6300' after hitting ENTER once. So the computer has absolutely no Operating System installed.

All I have is a Windows 95 installation disk and a Windows XP home ed Upgrade disk. I've put the 95 CD in butnothing happens. So I've tried the XP disk and it asks for the older version CD...so I put that in the drive and it starts to install Windows. It finally gives an error that the Hard Drive is not XP compatible. It is an old 20GB hard drive. I have no idea haow to change the BIOS since it has no OS.

Is there anything I can do? I'm willing to buy a new IDE Hard Drive but I'm worried that won't work either.

xp wont upgrade from a 95 disk. simple as that. you either need to lay your hands on a 98 disk which are very very hard to find or to buy yourself a complete brand new operating system and not just an upgrade version. theres too much detail to fully explain the case as to why win 95 cannot be upgraded to xp in this forum box, but if you PM me i will quite happily divulge this information to you.

look forward to hearing soon.

you can also send me an email by going to the link displayed by clicking my name

I'm just worried that if I buy a full version of XP and try to install it, that I'll get the same error message about the incomptible hard drive. The XP upgrade seems to begin to install fine...it just asks for a CD of a previous Windows version and does it's thing. I think it has something more to do with how Compaq partitioned the drive. I'm not very computer literate so I could be dead wrong.

I'm willing to buy a new larger hard drive, but I've heard of problems with old machines not recognizing drives with more than 32GB. Someone please explain what I should do in terms for dummies...I can take it.

I still don't understand why Compaq's recovery disks won't work.

maybe the hard disk is incompatible but it would be the first time i've heard of anything like this. i cannot understand why the compaq recovery disks wont work either, like maybe there is a possible problem with the actual hard disk itself here or the disks. i believe that you may be able to get hard drives that will work still but its a case of seeking them out. best thing to do here is get yourself a new hard disk and a new o/s. failing that take it down to your local PC service centre along with the disks and see what they advise. i have a horrid feelin that they're gonna agree with me here. sorry!!

Well, I just got a new WesterDigital hard drive and tried installing it this weekend. I followed the instructions and ran the install CD that came with the drive. It starts out fine and then seems to get hung up. It displays a "command or filename not found" error and then "X:/" . I don't know where to go from here. Can anyone point me in the right direction? I might have to start a new thread now for this problem.

I am having a very similar problem with my compaq 5716 restore disks. My computer was in good working order before I inserted the restore disk. I wanted to reformat the hard drive and reload all the original factory software. I had only did this once before in the five years I've owned the computer in 2003 without a problem.

All hardware worked in the computer prior to me running the CD. I cold booted it with the Compaq restore disk in it (there are 2 disks you must run.) It gave me the choice of 1 factory restore disk or multiple disks. I have tried both ways neither works.

The computer will anounce it will format the drive and all data will be lost. Then it proceeds to load the original software. Near the end of the first disk the computer halts and I get this message:

"factory 004 48829kb read fault on drive N."

then it gives me the choices of abort, retry, and ignore. When you hit ignore it continues loading the software on the disks. It will stop ask for the second disk and I put that in there. Then it will eject the second disk and I will get the image screen with the icon and it will say "restore underway."

At the bottom it says how close it is completing. Both the percent loaded and the time clock move normally then halts at 21% and the clock at 1:19. Then nothing.

I have tried every possible option loading and unloading the restore disks. Several times it has partioned the drive and formating before the restore disk menu comes up. Then the exact same thing happens as above when trying to reload the original factory software and settings from the restore CDs.

Now my problem is when I try and start the computer without the disks I get a message saying that there is no operating system on the computer. I can hear the hard drive working and see that little led in front. All the other drives appear to be okay. The computer has 96 ram and two hard drives-a western digital 15 gig I believe and then a 2 gig save hard drive.

I have a boot disk if that's any help.

Any suggestions anyone?