ItsGeekToMe.co

Q: Are there one or two methods of getting past A: prompt or C: prompt when prompted to insert a boot disk?

– Lisa E.
Navarre, FL

 A: Sorry, Lisa, but no.  A boot disk is needed to, well, to boot the computer.  Without an operating system (OS), a computer is just so much circuitry.  You’ll only be able to get to your files after you boot it into an OS (DOS or Windows).  Some things you said in your e-mail lead me to think that you still have an OS present on this computer’s hard drive.  While you are in the CMOS, don’t forget to enable the hard disk, and make sure that drive C: is listed as a boot device.  Booting from the floppy is possible, but it will be tricky.  You can get boot images off the internet, but you said this computer only has a 5 ¼” drive.  You’ll have to find a way to make a bootable 5 ¼” disk, which might involve pulling the 5 ¼” drive and temporarily installing it in another computer.  A good source of boot images is the website Bootdisk.com.

Q: I have a 7-year-old Compaq laptop with a 10 GB hard drive. A couple of years ago I upgraded from Windows Me to XP. The hard drive reached 96% of capacity at about the same time I acquired a 60 GB external hard drive. I cannot do a proper defrag unless I have at least 15% of free space. My question is, what is running in the background of my C: hard drive that is taking up so much space? And what can I delete or move to the external drive, to free up more space in the C: drive?  I did a defrag and sent you a copy of the report.

– Jerry A.
Fort Walton Beach,FL

A: It sounds like you’re managing to keep a pretty old system thrumming along pretty well except for your drive space crunch.  The listing you sent along showed where most of your space has gone.  1.23 gigs are being used by Outlook’s e-mail storage file.  That’s a lot considering that the total usable drive capacity is only a little over 7 gigs.

It might be possible to replace that hard drive with something larger.  There’s no way for me to know what is compatible with your particular model, but you might call Compaq’s Tech Support and ask for the specs of compatible hard drives.  You should be able to find one on the web.  At the low-end capacities your computer is likely to be able to handle, if you can find one, the price should be pretty low.