Compaq LTE 5100 wont boot from floppy!!!!

Silly question, but have you checked the bios to make sure it's set to boot from floppy?

Yes I have tried every possible way on the bios just to make sure. It is set correct. I can here it accessing the floppy but still it says invalid system disk. I have tried a few different boot disk. Thanks

This laptop is a really nice piece of equipment. i really like old laptops like this, even I still use my 90Mhz Thinkpad when I'm on the road. For me it sounds just like the floppy's heads are dirty. (but if it could record diskettes before and read them after this, but it didn't read diskettes made on other FDD's then things are more serious)

Your right this is a nice old laptop. I bought it used and it was working fine, I just formated it to install Windows 3.1 because I like using old systems and OSs. The floppy worked fine with Windows 98. It just wont boot from it. I mean this is just a few hours later that I formated and tried to install. Thanks for the suggestion.

Have you tried ejecting and re-inserting the floppy module? It's only held in by the friction of the internal connector unless there is the locking/retainer screw installed. I've got an LTE 5380 and it only boots from floppy and HDD, so if you want to install Linux you'll probably need to do either an install from a secondary partition or a network/FTP install if you can't find a dock with the extra expansion module ports. I'm not positive if the module is sleep-swapable, but if it is it would make installation much easier. If you do want ot find a floppy module a used shop might have some. I found one for $5 in a parts bin, a Teac CD-46 E, Compaq Comp. Corp. J6075, 6x CD-ROM drive 242113-001.

EDIT: Just ran through the BIOS on mine: There are two different places to diable the floppy!

Initialization:Disable Diskette Boot should have a _ and not a check next to it.

Security:Diskette Drives: (Disable Diskette Drives|Disable Diskette Boot) should both have the _.

Yep I tried ejecting it a couple of times. The bios is set correct. I cant partition the hard drive because it wont boot to a startup disk to get to fdisk. Thanks for the info thought I will try it all one more time.

You can always get a fairly cheap (usually less than $10) 2.5" -> 3.5" IDE adapter kit and do the partition and a basic DOS install on a desktop.

I made the hard drive bootable but when I put it in the laptop it said invalid partition table. It wont let me install to the hard drive on my lap top with the adapter. Any idea on how I can get it to install correctly. It is a 1.2gb hard drive but dos 6 only lets you format to like 700 mb or so. That may be why it says invalid partition. Thanks for the advice on the adapter I am at least getting some where with it.

You might try doing your partitioning from a Win98 boot lfoppy, then reboot and use the DOS set to install DOS onto the partition. At the least you can make a clean partition, then do something like "format c: /s" then stick the drive in the laptop and see if it boots. If it does, then go ahead and install DOS. You'll likely want to format it as a FAT16 part. so DO Scan read it. Off hand I don't remember when DOS started to read FAT32, but it was around Win95, which actually used either to install.

sry im dumb edited my own stupidty