I have a Campaq Armada 1750 that was switching on ok, booting from CDROM ok but showing "1782 Disk Controller Failure" during POST. It would not boot from HDDs.

I tried changing HDD - same "1782 Disk Controller Failure".

I also tried inserting using a CF card with a CF2IDE adapter - no error message. Booted from CDROM into Win98 install only to be presented with the error that HDD was not found.

I then disassembled the laptop and did not see anything abnormal - no battery leakage etc. (might have to do again and have a much closer look). Put the laptop back together and it started doing another not such a great thing :

- plug in the power lead (battery is not in the laptop)
- laptop turns on by itself withou me pressing the Power button.
- all leds above keyboard light up, no beeps
- laptop hangs from there (most of the time)

Tried the above without HDD, without floppy drop and without CDROM too.

Sometimes, instead of hanging it continues to do the normal boot however with the "1782 Disk Controller Failure" error. After that error I can proceed and it reports there is no bootable source (even though the HDD I inserted does have a working WIN98).

Also, the floppy seems not operational (at least not 100%). It seeks and attempts to boot from it (using a known working WIN98 bootable floppy) but it still reports No Boot source.

Since I can boot from a CD and it allows me to go past the "1743 - Disk Controller Failure" message, it does not look like the IDE controler is fully dead.

I am thinking now I should try and boot from a CD with the HDD in the laptop (I only tried it with the CF card) and see if FDISK sees the HDD (or CF card)

I don't seem to enter bios.

Hoping to find pointers or people with the same issue.

I did come across a similar forum post with no solution but they seem to have a battery leakage issue: Compaq Armada 7770DMT - Motherboard Issue?