Compaq also said it named Michael D Capellas (44) as acting chief operating officer in what analysts called a sign that the search for a new chief executive could stretch over several quarters. ``It's not raining high-tech CEOs right now,'' said Louis J Mazzucchelli Jr. analyst at Gerard Klauer Mattison. ``It is going to take a long time to fill it.''

Since April, when the board sacked chief executive Eckhard Pfeiffer, the company has been run by three directors. Capellas, a former Oracle Corp executive who joined Compaq less than a year ago as senior vice-president of information management, will oversee Compaq's sales, service and product groups until a new chief executive is named.

Compaq declined to make Capellas available. In a memo to employees, the three directorsnoted, ``these are major changes that raise questions about the roles and responsibilities that each of you has, and that change, for some, is difficult. The process of realignment, however, should not distract us from our core goals and strategies. The objective of these changes is to simplify operations and improve execution.''

Rose, a key player in the acquisition a year ago of minicomputer maker Digital Equipment Corp and the one who took charge of folding Digital products into Compaq, is leaving effective Thursday. A Compaq spokesman wouldn't elaborate on the departure, and Rose didn't return phone calls seeking comment.

Rose is the fourth senior vice-president to leave since Pfeiffer's firing. The 53-year-old executive ran a business responsible for engineering and marketing of network servers, workstations and data-storage products. Those products accounted for a third of Compaq's $31.2 billion in revenue last year but were partly responsible for the earnings shortfall in the first quarter thisyear.

A gregarious executive who ran Compaq's fastest-growing unit and raised quarter horses as a pastime, Rose had been a PC executive at Digital before joining Compaq as head of its desktop PC division in 1993.

Rose, the company's third-highest-paid executive last year, had taken a low profile in recent weeks. He and several executives came under fire from shareholders during the company's annual meeting for heavy selling of Compaq stock just before the company disclosed its first-quarter sales were below expectations. Rose sold 1,10,000 shares at prices from $41.43 to $47.43 a share. He had held some 1.2 million shares at the end of February.

The company named Enrico Pesatori, a senior vice president, as acting head of the enterprise computer group, succeeding Roe. Pesatori previously was running the company's sales in Asia and South America after a sales realignment.

In recent months, the heads of Compaq's world-wide sales, online business and service units have left. The company also confirmedthat Robert Supnik, vice president of corporate research, has resigned effective June 11.

--The Wall Street Journal