Top 20 Compaq Presario CQ56-115DX Laptop Questions & Answers

what CD, of the 100s? of types/formats/file classes, (what's there?) NO OS stated, XP the virus magnet. why post lacking this key fact, what Operating system.? or Linux, that is correct some came with Linux. SUSE its 7 years old, 2 times a few, but who counts years, well age matters.. yes, most users of PCs never leave confines of IE, still running IE5? well the list you made is near correct: 1: bad Disc or wrong disk. non stated. 2: bad drive. 3: bad driver. (cd/dvd HP driver) get it from HP 4: windows is corrupted. XP or w7 was shipped if windows. a/v clean or reload XP or do F11 HP recovery to cure this. First off, no CD stated, there are vast formats for CD the first that must work are: 1: CD-DA a store bought CD.. 2: any install disk, CD, with files on it , do yo see files"? 3: do you have the HP driver loaded for the CD drive? 4" was your, CD home made say burned CD-R ( recorded?) if XP is Service PACK 3 loaded? it must be. your PC came new with many CD/ DVD drive options even the LightScribe. the software is here. https://support.hp.com/us-en/product/compaq-presario-cq56-100-notebook-pc-series/4247498/model/4308236/drivers

U have a nasty bug in there. Your best bet is using another computer download the latest malwarebytes program onto a usb stick. Using the hiren disk boot up to the fake desktop, navigate to the usb stick via explorer and run the program and get the latest updates for it at same time. Then run it and clean out the crud that is in the machine causing havoc.When you reboot go back into the program and permanently remove the deleted items that are in the quarantine area.

no photos posted, it takes what, 5min to snap photo and post it? old CQ56, a relic in PC dog lives, for sure. pages, what pages,? name one/? videos, well that is complex topic, videos have vast formats and the players used and sources, non of which you stated. whAT OS, XP the virus magnet, never post lacking OS name and version. or its all just fireworks, and bs. Id reload the unstated OS, of XP for sure. wow a real model stated, here, fully, CQ56-115DX it came new with XP or W7 new. what might yours be? last year, W7 was upgraded to W10 for free, did you? we cant guess ANY of that. Compaq Presario CQ56-115DX Notebook PC birth year 2009/10 still supported by HP, lucky you, that the software for it free while HP still has it. ill now post on video videos can be viewed online or off. Il'l guess you do this online. like youtube. I use VLC, the player works. most others dont or can not do some formats, (bad acts) as in most program apps, xp verison are rife with viruses on line so avoid XP. unless that is fun, getting cyberattacked. most sources are malware or worse, use the makers pages. is best. this is the best I can do lacking OS name, and no photos of the failing app. http://www.videolan.org/vlc/

Hi Lucas. The situation could be one of several things, depending on how the hard drive is attached to the computer.

1. Inside. You had an old hard drive. you opened the computer, took the old drive out, put the new drive in, and turned it on.
2. Inside - you had room for two drives and added this second one.
3. Outside. You've hooked the drive up with a USB chassis and cable.

I'll start with lowest level, and my apologies if i include things that you're rolling your eyes about. Some folks know it inside and out, some don't.

1. The new drive needs to have an operating system (OS) installed that works with your laptop (i.e. something like Windows or some flavor of Linux). Unless prepared ahead of time, the disk is just a place to store stuff. it will need to have the OS installed first before it can boot your computer up. This is the case, you'll need to start with OS install media (you should be able to boot off that from CD ROM or USB. From there, it'll give you instructions on how to load the OS onto the hard drive.
2. The drive has an OS on it, but your computer may not know to look at that hard drive. In the early boot-up process, that is driven by the laptop firmware, there are set-ups for what order things are searched for boot media. You'll need to pause bootup early - it'll usually flash by and you'll likely press F2 or F4 to get into the setup menus. If, say, there's a CD rom in your CD drive, and the menu is set to first look for boot media on CD, then from Hard Drive, then it may go there, not be able to boot from the CD since it's a music CD, and stop. Or conversely be set to go to the HD first, not see it, and stop. You'd need to alter the boot order then to see if you can get the drive talked to .
3. Also in those menus, there may be multiple SATA connections, that can be turned on or off. You may have to go through and enable the connection to that drive to ninny-slap the firmware in bothering to talk to it.
4. Drive is in an external USB chassis. - Here again, you may have to go tell your boot firmware to enable, or add priority to booting from a USB device. Factory defaults are often 'no' to minimize vunerability to random malware on thumb drives.
5. Hard drive is formatted, but not to what your PC can read. if it was, for instance, formatted for a Mac, the OS may not be able to deal with it without re-formatting it to something like FAT32 or NTFS. You'd need to start with the Hardware manager disk utilities to see if it can even see the disc (though you'll need a working OS to do this)
6. You can also try moving the disc to another system to see if it works there. if it does, it could be that the connection in your computer is broken or not connected well.
7. If this is right after a new OS install, sometimes this can be a bit confusing for the OS the first time it tries to boot. You might want to try booting in Safe mode to see if it can bootstrap it's way up. It may be needing to do a ton of updates and driver downloads.

That scratches the surfaces. having been through all variety of good and bad disc install experiences, I'll mostly counsel patience. Good Luck! D

Hi James, If you are using internet explorer you can use this guide on how to get your toolbar back. http://support.microsoft.com/kb/962963 If you are using Google chrome press CTRL + SHIFT + B Please let me know if this helps or not. Thank you, Hunter Quinn IBM Help Desk Supervisor

Well what I really wanted to know the most is if it pops up while you\'re not even touching your mouse or keyboard...If you changed your .exe to .com like I said and it came back, then it\'s normal... ... Just delete the calc.com file. Don\'t worry, calc.exe came back on its own so the calc.com we made is now useless. That\'s why you can now delete calc.com. It\'s also just to reset what was in your old calc.exe, in case it has a keyboard shortcut and other hidden stuff integrated.Still gotta make sure though... Can you right-click on calc.exe and choose "Properties" to see if there\'s any keyboard shortcut? The field (shortcut key) should be left blank in case there\'s something in there. Or to "None".IF the calc.exe still pops up while you\'re not doing anything, then it\'s time for some hijackthis.Get it here:http://www.download.com/Trend-Micro-Hijack...4-10227353.htmlDo a system scan and save a logfile.After the scan is over, copy all what\'s in the list (notepad), and post it here.Let\'s take a look at what\'s running.

O/S is corrupt. Format and install

Remove the battery, disconnect the power cord then push and hold the power button for 5-10 seconds. Try it again afterwards.

In the top left hand corner of the touch pad there is a little white dot. Double tap that with your finger and it should light up orange and that means your touch pad is disabled, double tap again to enable it. Hope that helps!

Hold 'Alt' key - the press the 3 other keys to create the symbol, release 'Alt' key.

If your pc is "freezing" or stopping the majority of the time there's too much running for the ram to handle. Have you tried cleaning the hard drive? A good one is to go to www.piriform.com and download the ccleaner. It's a free program and has some awesome results.

try using boot recovery disk that u should have made when u setup youre computer ps set bios to boot cd or dvd rom and save or try f8 in recovery mode and try it that way if not u could try the manufactures for a recovery disk or purchase a new copy of windows or try a linux boot disk maybe use full thanks

Press the "caps lock" key once to take it off capital letters. If that doesn't work, get an external keyboard and plug it in and try it. That should do it.

Please use F11 key (tap it during booting process) and follow the instructions.

You can't just attach an external monitor to most running laptops. Nothing will happen. You must attach the monitor when the laptop is off, then start the laptop and it will recognize the external monitor and send the video to it.

Dear Darren, In general, you need to select which output display to use, when you have more than one display connected to the laptop. This can be done by pressing and holding the fn in the lower left hand of your keyboard and then pressing F4. Doing this repeatedly will switch from the laptop display to the external display to image on both displays. Hope you may find this information helpful! Best regards, Miguel L. Martins

apps or driver software?

First you go to this website and then select your Operating system and download all driver for your laptop computer. http://h10025.www1.hp.com/ewfrf/wc/softwareCategory?os=4062&lc=en&cc=us&dlc=en&sw_lang=&product=4308201

Open the ram memory cover and remove the memories module a d clean the contact wire with soft cotto. Cloth an re-insert and start the computer. Maybe it helps

Can you boot to the BIOS screen OK?