wrote:

The compaq disk I have is the $10 one they send you if you say you
lost yours and it is a pretty generic XP SP2 load. I have used it a
lot, not always on a Compaq/HP.
Drivers are always the trick since what is on that disk is minimal at
best.

This kinda sounds like "installing" and not just copying.

https://www.windowsbbs.com/threads/u...resario.42873/

The thread starter there, managed to end up with a dual-boot.

And that is hardly the "Factory Restore" you associate with
OEM (copying type) media. If it was a Factory Restore, it should
have zapped everything on the disk before it started.

And I still don't understand their reference to "BIOS returned
to Defaults". Sure, on a conventional motherboard you can
do a "Load Setup Defaults", "Save and Exit" to achieve such
a result. Is this one of those weird Compaq BIOS setups with
half the BIOS sitting on the hard drive ? Which makes it
easy to trash.

And the machine particulars in that example:

Compaq Presario 5000 series. Model 5BW220, with
A Maxtor 120Gb HDD,
P-3 1.33GHz. 133MHzFSB
which originally had Win ME installed.

That's close to my vintage year 2000 machine. The machine
likely didn't get the 120GB drive until later. And the
reasons it's 120GB, is because a larger disk would be over
the limit for the BIOS.

My machine shipped with the 64GB drive limit, and a BIOS
update extended that to 128GB (allowing a 120GB drive to be
the boot drive). The larger disks weren't available
right away.

And my machine from back then, couldn't boot from USB. It
only had USB 1.1 (too slow). It couldn't use a DVD drive
(refused to issue commands to it). It could use a CD-R
or a CD-RW optical drive. If you wanted to install an OS, it
has to fit on CD media (ruling out modern copies
of Ubuntu or Mint, but still allowing Puppy). And WinXP
fits on a CD, so that one is OK. Vista+, not so much.

Paul