I recently refurbed a Compaq Deskpro XE 4100. Just as I thought that I was in the final lap, the HDD went tits up. Fortunately I had old old 503mb HDD available that I was able to reformat, but now I'm having trouble re-installing the Diagnostics Partition. It took me awhile to figure out that in order to allow SETUP to create a new diagnostics partition I first had to remove all existing partitions, then boot from the SETUP disk. SETUP went ahead and created a 3mb partition, but I'm having difficulty in populating it.

I'm using :

SP1363 : Compaq Personal Computer Diagnostics/SETUP 10.06 Rev E
SP1364 : Compaq Personal Computer Diagnostics/TEST 10.06 Rev E *OR*
SP1456 : Compaq Personal Computer Diagnostics/TEST 10.07 Rev B
(1456 is supposed to be compatible with 1363, but both 1364 and 1456 exhibit the dame behavior)

Running SETUP / Manage Diagnostic Partition / Create Diagnostics Partition displays -

"To create or update the Diagnostics Partition, you must have the DIAGNOSTICS diskette and the SETUP diskette.
The following prompts will ensure that the proper diskettes are available"

This is part of my problem - the installer makes a distinction between DIAGNOSTICS and SETUP, but release notes refer to them as Diagnostics/SETUP and Diagnostics/TEST.
Once I start the partition creation, the prompt is

"Please insert the PC DIAGNOSTICS diskette"

SETUP disk is not accepted, but the Diagnostics/TEST disk is (either 1364 or 1456), indicating that DIAGNOSTICS == TEST. We then enter

"Copying files to the Diagnostics Partition. Please wait..."

Great! Except - the floppy gets read for 15-20 seconds, then... nothing. The Please wait... dialog continues to display indefinitely. Same behavior for both 1364 and 1456.

After rebooting with the SETUP floppy, I'm informed

"There is a problem with you Diagnostics Partition"

and I'm prompted to delete it and start over. After selecting 'Delete Diagnostics Partition", the prompt is...

"The Diagnostics Partition has been deleted from your hard drive.
Ensure that the DIAGNOSTICS diskette in in drive A and then press ENTER to reboot the system"

This time however, the Diagnostics/TEST disk (1364/1456) doesn't cut it. If I reboot with either of those, I get

"Diskette I/O Error. Bad or missing Command Interpreter"

SETUP, however, supports a reboot. Meaning DIAGNOSTICS == SETUP??

So, I've been around this sequence about five or six times with the same result. At first I though it might be a disk error on my TEST disk, but I get the same result with 1364 and 1456. It almost seems that maybe there's another DIAGNOSTICS disk used exclusively for initializing the Diagnostics Partition, but I don't know what the would be.

Any insight would be greatly appreciated. Thanks!