Hello all,

I have an old Compaq laptop - a 500 mhz in which the HDD carked it - a 5 gb IBM Travelstar HDD.

I got a REPLACEMENT - a toshiba HDD2918 (about 6.5 gb).

When I turn the power onto the laptop, after a few minutes of the Compaq screen,  I get an error "Fixed Disk Parameter Table or BIOS error - system halted".

Nothing else works whilst the HDD is plugged in.

With the HDD disconnected, I can load in the Win200pro boot disks through the A drive - although I am not sure what use that is whilst the HDD is not recognised.

Can anyone offer an ideas as to where I go from here?hit the del key or f10 on boot and see id fthe hard drive is there...if not try auto detect hard drives... i am glad that you have ditched the ibm travelstar h/d..nightmare...I have tried holding down the F10 and Del keys whilst booting. I get a minutes worth of the Compaq screen, THREE long beeps and "Fixed Disk Parameter Table or BIOS error - system halted" still end up on the screen.

I wasnt aware that there is an Auto-detect feature for HDD's. Can you tell me where to find that? That may well solve my little problem!!on the hard drive is there  a plastic looking jumper ...set it to cable select...and matbe the answer lies here>http://h20000.www2.hp.com/bizsupport/TechSupport/Product.jsp?prodTypeId=321957&locale=en_US&taskId=110I think we might be talking at cross purposes as little. The hard drive I have now, the Toshiba DOESNT appear to have anything 'switchable' on it. Its screwed into a little cradle that covers the pins and converts them to a FEMALE slot STYLE plug - not unlke the sort of slots you plug an AGP video card into. That complete set-up slides into the base of the laptop.

There is no cables or anything that I can get to. Of course I could be having a blonde moment............http://h18007.www1.hp.com/support/files/Armada/us/download/10562.html example of what you might have to do....Thanks for that Merlin. I tried that and couldn't manage to locate the one for my specific hdd, so I have returned from the little corner puter shop that sold me the hdd to see if they can sort it out.

But I do thank you for your time. Most appreciated.