Setup hanging at setup is starting windows.

[Guest]

I have an HP notebook with no floppy. I have a formatted drive and I am
trying to reinstall from the factory disk that came with the notebook. It
freezes at SETUP IS STARTING WINDOWS. I have hit F% when it prompts to
install drivers and went through every selection for the processor with no
results. I have hit F6 to specify drivers but them it prompts me to put in
the floppy. The notebook has no floppy. These are the 2 sloutions that I can
find but neither work. I am at my wits end and need some ideas. I can not
boot normal as I get a NTLDR is missing error and that is why I am
reinstalling. As it is a notebook I can only remove the RAM (which I did). I
have set the bios back to defaults.

Please help.

 

[DL]

Its not neccessary to reinstall, usually, with a ntldr is missing error.
Whether you can repair using the hp factory disk, as apposed to a winxp cd,
I'm not sure
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/555304/en-us
The F6 option usually only applies to sata/raid drivers

 

[Guest]

I am unable to get to the recovery screen because it freezes before then. I
just tried and this happens with a 2000 Pro disk as well. Perhaps it is
hardware.

 

[DL]

Were you previously having probs or are you just installing a larger hd?

 

[Guest]

This is not my Pc. I am helping someone out with it. They told me that they
got a bad virus and had someone else work on it at they erased the hard drive
so I am just trying to reinstall. After my troubleshooting and diagnosis,
including a different hard drive, I call hp and luckily it is under
warranty. I am guessing that if another Hard drive did not fix it and I
swapped out RAM than it must be some other hardware issue. HP thought the
same and they are replacing it. Thank you for your posts. I wish I knew what
the problem was but now I will never know.

Thank you.