No Fixed Disk Present

The sound you hear is the sound of a bad Hard-Drive. Need to replace.

Definitely sounds like a bad hard drive. I had one fail last week with the same kind of symptoms. If you are familiar with the system, go into the bios (I think it is F10 on most Compaqs) and there is an IDE test on one of the menus. This test will help verify if it is in fact a failed hard drive.

If the system is still under warranty, just contact their technical support and provide them with the error code given by the IDE (hard drive) test. They will usually ship out a replacement hard drive overnight.

Hope this helps!

Yep sounds like it crashed a few heads on the platters. You'll probably need to replace it with a used drive from some mom-pop shop for around $10 for a 1.2 gig drive up to $20 for a 2 gig drive. It's probably simpler to replace the whole machine for around $25 to a pentium 90+ used computer. Depending where you get it from it may even include the operating system. Good Luck!

This drastic situation calls for drastic measures. It appears your drive is dead and will have to be replaced. I have been able to get a bad drive going again and get my essential files off it by using the following method. I swear it has worked forme with drives that make noise and would not respond. 1) Remove drive. 2)hold drive 8 inches over carpeted (not plush) surface. 3) Release drive to fall 8 inches to floor. 4) reinstall drive and verify temporary fix. I should add that a clicking sound could also signal power supply failure, since the 12 volts that spins the drive motor is failing to provide enough current therefore the drive clicks. Kinda like your car starter running with a weak battery. More than likely it is your hard drive failing.

sorry for your loss. replacing a hard drive on a Compaq will try your patience and on one that old, you are in for a time of it. the advice to find a similar size used replacement hd is really good, imho. if you can do that, it might be practical tokeep that old box going. otherwise, on top of getting your deskpro 486 to recognise a large hard drive (need new controller card) you will need to download and install on new drive the special Compaq diagnostic partition and setup utility disks. maybe time to buy a $400 reconditioned emachine?

If you do opt to replace just the drive, do a little research before you spend any money. Long ago COMPAQ computers were very proprietary. You could not install or replace just anything. It had to be genuine COMPAQ or else it probably would not work. Even their keyboard connectors were different. I don't know if your system is old enough to fall under those proprietary requirements, but it might save some hassles if you knew ahead of time.