XP Home won't start.

[WJWheels]

I'm weak on XP and need some suggestions!

At startup the pc (Hp w/P4 2gb) goes to the menu screen with "start normally" hilited. "Enter" at this point shows start up screen and then goes to very short blue screen that doesn't even stay on the screen for a second. The pc then restarts and the process is repeated. It makes no matter which menu option (safe mode, last good configuration, etc) is chosen, the result is the same.

Win98 startup disk & fdisk shows 15% non dos partition and 85% NTFS partition which is Active.

I did not have a WinXP home CD available to attempt repair. Does HP ship the CD with their pcs?

Any suggestions are appreciated..

[Surge1243]

The computer should have at least come with some sort of recovery CD that you can restore the OS with. Is that the case, or do you have no such CD?

[WJWheels]

Thanks Surge... Yesterday the recovery/winXP CD could not be located. The only other copy of winXP Home that I have available is from a Dell setup. I also have my own XP Pro disk. Do you think either of these would run the "repair" functions? I'm planning to be back visiting the ill pc today.

TIA

[mike breck]

I think the easiest option is to order a new Recovery CD from HP.

I remember reading that some consumers in the UK were not getting any Recovery CDs with their new systems and were told to chase up HP to obtain them.

HTH

[WJWheels]

I'll suggest that if the cd can't be located... thanks.

Assuming a format/re-install becomes necessary, how can I save data on the existing disk? My thoughts were to install a second hdd and copy data over. How do I access the data on the NTFS formatted partition?

[mike breck]

The second HD would need to have W2K or XP installed. Then you would be able to access the NTFS partitions on old HD.

I'm sure you could use the HD manufacturers software to clone the old HD to the new one. But that means you get the faulty OS as well as the data. So that's not much good.

BTW that "Non DOS partition" is probably the proprietory HP partition, where it keeps it's recovery data.

HTH

[mikeL]

My sister bought a HP about 8 months ago with XP, and they don't ship with a recovery disk, but I noticed that there is a hidden partition which is used instead of the recovery disk,

although I'm not sure if there's a way to get at it if XP won't boot

[chili9]

How old is your system? It does come with onboard recovery. All you have to do is at the power up is to hit F10 consisitently until you hear a number of beeps and the system will go into full recovery mode. Al you have to do is follow the menu.

[WJWheels]

Thanks chili9. I'll try that. The pc is probably about a year old. Like I mentioned it has a 2gig P4, so not too ancient. I hope that F10 thing works. Is that only a full recovery, where all data is lost?

[Hazydeth]

Macintosh Plus: Processor:Motorola 68000 - 8 Mhz Operating System: Mac OS 4.1 RAM: 1mb expandable to 4mb Hard Drive: 20mb External SCSI CD/DVD: N/A Floppy Drive: 800kb (double side) USB: Huh? Video: B&W 512x384 Total Cost: $2,600

LOVE THE SYSTEM!