HP Laptop Dead as a Doornail - Help!

gwenuska

It died on me and I tried the repair with the XP disc but nothing happened. Currently blue screen with 3 choices:
- To Set up Windows XP on the selected item, press Enter
- To create a partition in the unpartitioned space, press C
- To delete the selected partition, press D

I pressed R for a repair but nothing happened, same screen. Anyone out there with any advice for this problem? Dont want to press Enter yet, cause I will lose everything on the machine.
:eek:

johntreacy

When you say it died what do you mean, do you get a error when you try to start the computer without the xp cd in it??

Run_to_da_hills

Sounds like your HDD may have gone AWAL. Do you get the message "NTDLR missing"?

Col_Loki

[EDIT] From that list you have there it looks like you have went to the stage below and it is not detecting the old windows install.
Will post instructions that might help in recovery console.

The first "R" will bring you into a dos screen. It might be better to run a full windows repair (only replaces windows system files and leaves your programs & data alone). To do this you need to follow these instructions.

If it does not give you the second R for repair (ie has not detected a windows install) then its alot more work.

Instructions on how to run a repair install....

1. Boot the computer using the XP CD. (Might have to change the boot order in the BIOS).
2. When you see the "Welcome To Setup" screen, you will see the options below
3. Press Enter to start the Windows Setup.

Press ENTER. do not choose "To repair a Windows XP installation using the Recovery Console, press R",
4. Accept the License Agreement by pressing F8 and Windows will search for existing Windows installations.
5. Select the XP installation you want to repair from the list and press R to start the repair.

Should repair the install of Windows without deleting your Files/Settings etc.....

Definitely worth a shot.......

Col_Loki

Boot from the Windows CD again, this time press R to enter Recovery Console (DOS). You will be asked to input Admin Password.

After that there are 3 commands that can be used to repair the boot.ini & MBR.
I would try these two...
fixmbr c:
fixboot c:

And then try to rebuilt your Boot.ini file. See if it picks up your old windows install.
bootcfg /rebuild


After trying this, see if it will boot, if still no then you could try to see if it helped and try the original Full Windows Repair again.

After this it can get very messy.

gwenuska

Thanks for the instructions, we're back in action now, it worked. Thanks for all the help. Lost everything but had backed up in December so didnt lose a lot.

Alanstrainor

gwenuska wrote: »

Thanks for the instructions, we're back in action now, it worked. Thanks for all the help. Lost everything but had backed up in December so didnt lose a lot.

That's great...come to think of it...i haven't backed up my system in a while....:eek: