HP/Compaq Presario and Linux

[Jason Stephenson]

Benjamin Scott wrote:
> 
>   Keep in mind that many Compaq's keep the "BIOS setup" program on disk,
> where just about everything else keeps it in firmware.  That means that if
> you blow away the utility partition, you can no longer do anything useful to
> configure the BIOS.

I'll second this. In fact, every Compaq that I've ever seen does this. 
It's usually the last partition on the disk, is roughly 32MB in size and 
generally of a type not recognized by Linux fdisk or fips.

If you do manage to remove this partition, you can get it back by 
running the recovery CD that came with your Compaq. Then, you'll want to 
repartition the drive and not touch the one that meets the above 
criteria. You usually can't miss it, 'cause it shows up as Partition 4 
on a system with only 2 partitions.