Originally posted by vballstud:

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Did you at least see the BIOS screen appear?

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Originally posted by akuma47:

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run a hard drive test from a cd or floppy. i use Drive Fitness Test off of the hiren boot cd... this will tell you if it's the hard drive or just software. if it's software try a system restore

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Originally posted by scorpNZ:

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F1 Gets you into the BIOS,tap F1 key while booting,there's a setting there that can let you get a diag screen on boot that shows all the hardware being detected
F8 is to safe mode
f10 is recovery options including non destructive repair (keeps data intact i.e doc's contents) incl program files but all 3rd party software will have to be reinstalled incl SP3 & then there's destructive reformat

It sounds like you have a corrupted file system,normally a faulty hdd will bring up a no hard drive message or you'll just get a flashing horizontal bar at top left of screen,a way to do a full hardware test but bypasses the hdd is to run a live cd of linux,if it loads & runs you can well bet it's a corrupted hdd,a faulty hdd or data cable or the mobo's controller that's causing the issue,akuma's suggestion would be a good place to start if it can fix file system errors or detect corrupted sectors if it can't the next best thing would be a xp disc to run chkdsk /r which can be run from safe mode (command prompt option),but that's out

There's 3 recovery options if your comp has the recovery partion

1-system restor
2-non destructive recovery,puts comp back to original,keeps data intact but all 3rd party software will need reinstalling although the folders from them are still there,the my docs folder & emails remain intact also
3-Destructive recovery,hit that & there's no turning back

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Originally posted by One_Nut:

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None of the previous suggestions (which are just general) is going to solve this, I've had this problem a few times and its a real bitch to fix (just check around the net and you'll see no solutions to a simple fix or a fix for that matter). What has happened is your user profile is corrupted and its very difficult to get back to a previously working state (unless you have backedup your os). This happens when you have the autologin enabled as well. First you'll need Mircrosoft Diagnostics and Recovery Toolset (MDART), this will allow you access to your os, registry and various other tools you'll have to use. You'll need to go through the registry and modify some keys (your current userid needs to be removed/swapped with another user as well) or you can swap out your user profile with another one for a temp fix and then backup your stuff and reinstall (which I suggest if you don't have your user profile backedup as this takes much longer to fix than a reinstall). Temp fix to get into windows: C:\USERS\PROFILE, rename profile (which is your login name) to something else and then rename another account to yours (I did all users copy to get back in and worked on fixing). If editing the registry isn't a problem I can lookup the node you need to start at (I don't remember its exact location off memory but I can look it up after I'm done fixing another problem here). Just thought I'd lead you in the direction you need as this is a real burn when it happens.

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Quote:

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First you'll need Mircrosoft Diagnostics and Recovery Toolset (MDART), this will allow you access to your os, registry and various other tools you'll have to use.

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Originally posted by scorpNZ:

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Yes it should work fine,service packs are add ons not critical core components

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Originally posted by scorpNZ:

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Only if someone can instruct you in the procedure that's required & that seems to be one_nut,it's not just a matter of putting the disc in & then hey presto everything's back to normal,me personally if a backup image wasn't available i'd use the repair function of the in built recovery console to get back into xp to retrieve any data you need (or use an external hdd housing attached to another comp) then do a destructive reformat

below is the .exe to what one nut was referring too


http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/detai...&DisplayLang=en


EDIT: Look into getting acronis or ghost with any one of these two having an issue like data corruption or virus will be a walk in the park & about 10-60mins to get backup & running, depending on the amount of data that needs to be recovered,the beauty is you can recover a whole partition or the whole of C drive or a selected folder or a selected bit of data you can also browse those images as tho looking at a data partition including mounting it as a virtual OS,any issues or questions you have with cloning web search for "radified forums" all help is free,they specialise in drive imaging regardless the type of imaging software used

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Originally posted by scorpNZ:

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The website says install it then create an iso file to burn to cd,i assume it can make a bootable cd other than that i have no idea how it's used to get windows back

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Originally posted by scorpNZ:

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Do you have a recovery partition or disc if not hp should be able to supply one tho the last time i tried to get one from them they wanted quite a bit of money $80 nz ,tho if your in the US i think they have been forced to give them for nothing since we've already paid for the OS

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Originally posted by scorpNZ:

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Hp installs a recovery partition D on all it's later comps (not sure what they did before they started shipping all comps with the recovery partition),you access the recovery by tapping F10 on restart
assuming you have one or haven't deleted it or it's software,one of my previous posts gives the 3 recovery options

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