The interchangable drives appear to be why you couldn't boot from a CD anyway.

As I read the manual the only choice is floppy & hard drive.

As to the BIOS you would need to download it on another computer & create a bootable floppy:

Installation Instructions

This is a self-extracting file that contains the A12 System BIOS for the Latitude CPi notebook. After downloading, run the LCPI-A12.EXE file from
within Windows ONLY, and it will create the bootable BIOS disk. Reboot the system with this disk in the A: drive to flash the system.

I do see that one can use an external USB CD-ROM if the motherboard will boot from said drive.

How did you originally get XP on this laptop? Were you able to boot from your CD?

Anyway I don't see why the BIOS won't work for you as a starter.

Thanks for the help Jephree on the BIOS flash update. I booted up my computer the first time without the BIOS update disk in the drive, then inserted the disk after booting. The instructions told me I needed to get to my desktop to install it further, but I can't get to the desktop so I'm going to try booting it with the update disk in the drive as you said, shortly. Also, a couple of things I didn't tell you. About four months ago my computer died and as I thought it was the motherboard, I replaced the motherboard. The computer still didn't work though so I put the original motherboard back and proceeded to instead replace the CPU. That was the problem - a broken CPU, because the computer then worked. I think when I removed my motherboard though and put it back maybe it screwed up the BIOS somehow. Strangely and inexplicably, it's got an unknown administrator password now but I don't ever remember giving it one! I think this is what's preventing me from changing the BIOS settings. I called the dealer where I bought my computer and he told me if I removed the battery from the motherboard for a couple of days the BIOS would then reset itself to the default after I put it back on the motherboard after 48 hours. I believe the said battery is the CMOS battery. I'm about to try this, but first I'm going to do what you said and flash the BIOS by booting it up with the flash BIOS diskette in the drive.

In answer to your other questions, when I bought my computer it had Windows 98 installed on it. I then bought an XP Home Edition upgrade CD from Circuit City and installed it to my computer from this CD about 2 years back.

The battery will clear the CMOS. It only takes a couple of minutes.

So you were able to boot from the CD?

Let us know how the BIOS goes.

Jephree:

I just tried the flash BIOS update with the diskette in the drive. It failed the first time saying my battery needed to be installed. I assumed it meant the laptop battery, not the CMOS, so I slipped the laptop battery in the bay and tried to update again and then again I got another error message that said that the update was canceled by the user. How can this be? I never canceled the update. All I can think is that administrator privileges are being denied me due to the password thing in the BIOS.

You say the battery will clear the CMOS and that it only takes a couple of minutes. Does this mean that I can access it by simply removing my keyboard to access the motherboard and then removing the CMOS battery and reattaching it? My computer dealer tells me it should be a single battery like a watch battery attached to the motherboard.

In answer to your other question, I still can't boot from the CD.

Yes to the battery. It is a disk like a watch battery. Some older ones are a bit larger.
It should be fairly obvious. Sometimes also there will be a 3-pin jumper labled CMOS or somesuch. It should be close to the battery. If you also have this jumper it probably has pins 1&2 connected. With the battery removed change the jumper to 2&3 for like 2 minutes & the return to 1&2 & replace the battery.

If no jumpers then just do the battery.

Originally Posted by markg

In answer to your other question, I still can't boot from the CD.

I just meant that at one point you were able.

When you upgraded to XP.

I took apart my computer, disconnected the CMOS for about five minutes, then reconnected it. I did not see any three-pin jumper. I booted up the computer but now when I press F2 after I turn it on I can't even get my BIOS screen to come up any more. I also tried to flash update again but it's doing the same thing as before. What a nightmare!

Just browsing your manual:

<Fn><F1>
Opens the System Setup program.

Have you tried this?

Thank you Jephree:

Yes, I did. I tried both Fn and F1 together as well as F2 alone.