Reformatting Hard Drive Problems

[Rich]

Have an HP Pavilion that was acting up so I attempted to format the
hard drive using recovery disks that I had made when I got it.
Problem is that after the first disk, the PC would not read disk 2.
I
tried many, many times after which it told me to put in disk 3. It
ran through that and asked for disk 1 again. This time though, it
would not read it. I am stuck.

Turns out though that I did a back up of the D:/ partition that
contains the system.sav. I have it on an external hard drive. How
can I use it to reformat and restore the PC? Any help would be
appreciated. I am a moderately capable computer user, so if it is
beyond me, please let me know as well.


Thanks

 

[Peter]

Have an HP Pavilion that was acting up so I attempted to format the
hard drive using recovery disks that I had made when I got it.
Problem is that after the first disk, the PC would not read disk 2.
I
tried many, many times after which it told me to put in disk 3. It
ran through that and asked for disk 1 again. This time though, it
would not read it. I am stuck.

Turns out though that I did a back up of the D:/ partition that
contains the system.sav. I have it on an external hard drive. How
can I use it to reformat and restore the PC? Any help would be
appreciated. I am a moderately capable computer user, so if it is
beyond me, please let me know as well.


Thanks

Did you boot from the CD or slip the CD in while in Windows? If the
former, use another computer to copy Disk 2 and the copy may work. If
the later, try booting from the CDs. Another way is to get a copy of
someone's generic OEM CD (it has to be generic and if you have home, it
has to be home, same for pro) and use the product key from the sticker
that should be on the case of your HP. Course you would also have to
find the drivers for the hardware like the video card, sound card, etc.
on the 'Net.

 

[Rich]

Did you boot from the CD or slip the CD in while in Windows? If the
former, use another computer to copy Disk 2 and the copy may work. If
the later, try booting from the CDs. Another way is to get a copy of
someone's generic OEM CD (it has to be generic and if you have home, it
has to be home, same for pro) and use the product key from the sticker
that should be on the case of your HP. Course you would also have to
find the drivers for the hardware like the video card, sound card, etc.
on the 'Net.

Thanks

I thought about making a copy of the disk, but wasn't sure if it
would work.

Any possibility of using the system.sav I have on the external hard
drive?

 

[Peter]

Thanks

I thought about making a copy of the disk, but wasn't sure if it
would work.

I've seen it work. When you copy it, it won't copy the scratches.

Any possibility of using the system.sav I have on the external hard
drive?

No, that's just part of the previous install and won't help you.

 

[Rich]

I've seen it work. When you copy it, it won't copy the scratches.




No, that's just part of the previous install and won't help you.

I thought that was the partition that had the recovery on it.

 

[Ben Myers]

Have an HP Pavilion that was acting up so I attempted to format the
hard drive using recovery disks that I had made when I got it.
Problem is that after the first disk, the PC would not read disk 2.
I
tried many, many times after which it told me to put in disk 3. It
ran through that and asked for disk 1 again. This time though, it
would not read it. I am stuck.

See http://h10025.www1.hp.com/ewfrf/wc/document?lc=en&cc=us&docname=bph07143

Turns out though that I did a back up of the D:/ partition that
contains the system.sav. I have it on an external hard drive. How
can I use it to reformat and restore the PC? Any help would be
appreciated. I am a moderately capable computer user, so if it is
beyond me, please let me know as well.

System.sav is one of the registry backup files and shouldn't be used once the
drive has been formatted.

Ben