irishmike
Experienced Member
Hello All:
I am struggling with a new acquisition of a Compaq Presario 1600S Notebook computer. This has an AMD K6 II processor and actually has fairly standard hardware otherwise. I got it with a messed up version of Windows 98 on it and of course this is how it came from the factory years ago. Naturally, there is no restore disk.
I installed Windows 2000 SP4 on it and it took just fine in that all the drivers were there for all the hardware in the notebook. I decided to install a 256 MB SODIMM to give me some more memory. This box has 64 MB hard wired to the mainboard and 1 expansion slot accessible in the usual fashion by a cover plate on the bottom. Theorhetically, it takes a max of 192 MB RAM which means 128 MB in the expansion or a 64 MB Expansion. It had a 64 MB expansion in the bottom and Windows 2K has only ever seen the first 64 MB (hard wired to the main board). Being a Compaq, it may be extremely picky, but the processor can see up to 2 GB so we should theorhetically be able to put a 512 SODIMM in the unit and have it work. The main issue is that 128 was the biggest back in the day.
So, the BIOS sees the 256 plus the 64 for a total of 320 MB of memory. However Windows 2k and all diagnostic programs (ie memtest) only see the 64.
The SoDIMM Is known good (tested in another machine) and again, even with the original 64 MB SoDIMM it still only sees the built in...
No BIOS updates exist. I have of course put a 20 GB hard drive and the expansion in with the idea that I could use this laptop for a while.
The Question (after all the background) is: Is there a way to update the BIOS with a standard Award updater -- has anyone done this successfully?
If I can not find a solution, I plan to pull the new hard disk and RAM and bin the whole machine (losing $50).
Hope someone can help me find a solution even if there is some kind of software that allows one to circumvent the BIOS limitation that hangs out in Windows?
Thanks in advance for any help.
Mike
I am struggling with a new acquisition of a Compaq Presario 1600S Notebook computer. This has an AMD K6 II processor and actually has fairly standard hardware otherwise. I got it with a messed up version of Windows 98 on it and of course this is how it came from the factory years ago. Naturally, there is no restore disk.
I installed Windows 2000 SP4 on it and it took just fine in that all the drivers were there for all the hardware in the notebook. I decided to install a 256 MB SODIMM to give me some more memory. This box has 64 MB hard wired to the mainboard and 1 expansion slot accessible in the usual fashion by a cover plate on the bottom. Theorhetically, it takes a max of 192 MB RAM which means 128 MB in the expansion or a 64 MB Expansion. It had a 64 MB expansion in the bottom and Windows 2K has only ever seen the first 64 MB (hard wired to the main board). Being a Compaq, it may be extremely picky, but the processor can see up to 2 GB so we should theorhetically be able to put a 512 SODIMM in the unit and have it work. The main issue is that 128 was the biggest back in the day.
So, the BIOS sees the 256 plus the 64 for a total of 320 MB of memory. However Windows 2k and all diagnostic programs (ie memtest) only see the 64.
The SoDIMM Is known good (tested in another machine) and again, even with the original 64 MB SoDIMM it still only sees the built in...
No BIOS updates exist. I have of course put a 20 GB hard drive and the expansion in with the idea that I could use this laptop for a while.
The Question (after all the background) is: Is there a way to update the BIOS with a standard Award updater -- has anyone done this successfully?
If I can not find a solution, I plan to pull the new hard disk and RAM and bin the whole machine (losing $50).
Hope someone can help me find a solution even if there is some kind of software that allows one to circumvent the BIOS limitation that hangs out in Windows?
Thanks in advance for any help.
Mike
