Computer builders....I need help.

[Mogobs30th]

Here's the deal. I have a somewhat old HP Pavilion 7960, made in about 2001. I bought this computer new in the same year. It came with Windows ME, which sucks. If anyone could remember having these computers, you would know that in case of a major system failure, that those computers came with three system recovery disks. These disks were used to return the computer to the state in which you bought it, right from the store.

Well, today I had to run those system restore disks to return the computer back to the original state. While doing so, my sh***y computer wants to lock up on me, right in the middle of the second disk. I had no option but to turn off the computer, and hope that I could restart the restore procedure where it had left off. That didn't happen. My computer now restarts ONLY in DOS mode, and I can't seem to restart the restore procedure, nor can I erase what has already been put on the computer. It seems as though only half of Windows is on there, and because the restore didn't finish, there are nessecary parts to windows ME that didn't get loaded on.

I have tried doing a few things, I got a hold of HP, went to a friends house and printed off a few things from HP's website, nothing worked. I currently am on another computer, with my monitor, printer, mouse, and everything hooked into it. I honestly think I fuct the harddrive up.

If anyone can help me, PLEASE tell me what I have to do. Do I need a new harddrive? I know I need to get XP badly, but I am not sure if I can reformat this harddrive to do so. It is stuck in DOS, and I don't know anything to type in the prompt that will help.

Any suggestions?

[mike h]

format the hard drive. do this by buying XP and putting the disk in, and it shows you the "partitions" and you are able to delete or format them. delete all of them and then install XP on the "raw" hard drive. how much RAM (memory) do you have and how fast is your processor?

[mike h]

unless you have stuff you want to save. in that case...

buy a new hard drive. install XP on it. set that one as "master" and the old one as "slave" (im going to assume you know how to set that up and you know what i mean if not tell me) then copy the files over to they XP drive.

[mike h]

=the reason i know so well is that i did it all day at work today... :rolleyes:

[Mogobs30th]

Better get a little more basic with me. I am not a genius when it comes to computers. I think I might as well just buy a new hardrive, but I am not even sure what type of harddrive I need in the first place.

BTW, the comp is a P4, 1.3ghz, 128 ram.

[Tyler]

that shouldnt happen with software changes.. only with bios updates....

if you screwup while installing or reformatting the OS on the hard drive, the bios should still take care of booting from the cd the next time around.. worst case scenerio would be that you have to start over in the recovery process...


doesnt windows 98 use FDISK for partitioning and formatting?

if so look at www.bootdisk.com and download the boot disk.. make the floppy, put it in the bad computer, turn bad computer on.. it will go to a dos prompt with A:\

then type in fdisk. its pretty self explanatory from there..

[mike h]

he said he used ME, which is really buggy my old comp had it. ick.

[mike h]

hey Mogobs30th, forget XP on that system. i would use windows 98 second edition. its very stable and would run good on your computer. either that or get a new computer. i would also recomend getting more RAM, just becuase the more you have the faster your computer can get stuff done.

[Mogobs30th]

A new comp is out of the question. I simply don't have the money for a new one. Rather build this one up, till the processor goes to hell. I can find harddrives for this thing pretty cheap, seeing as though it is only a 40 pin HD.

Wouldn't mind also getting some more memory, but that is where it can get expensive. My computer uses RDRAM, and from what I have been told in the past from other builders, depending on the applications used, that RDRAM is better than most out there. The comp currently has 128, want to bump the memory up to 384, so all I need is to get two 128 sticks.

As for a new OS, like I said, my comp uses Windows ME, which is the devil. I could use 98, but it seems so old to me, even though everything that works for ME, 2000, and XP will still work with 98 (I think). The computer I am currently using now has 2000, I like it, doesn't seem to have near the problems, but am I to understand that 2000 uses some of the same parameters (?) as ME?

[1DangerousV6]

Originally posted by Tyler:
that shouldnt happen with software changes.. only with bios updates....

if you screwup while installing or reformatting the OS on the hard drive, the bios should still take care of booting from the cd the next time around.. worst case scenerio would be that you have to start over in the recovery process...


doesnt windows 98 use FDISK for partitioning and formatting?

if so look at www.bootdisk.com and download the boot disk.. make the floppy, put it in the bad computer, turn bad computer on.. it will go to a dos prompt with A:\

then type in fdisk. its pretty self explanatory from there..

this is what i would recommend..except on my machine i use "FORMAT C:/S" once it boots to A: ...reformats the C: drive leaving room for the system files..

once you have reformatted and named the new partition (basically your C: drive) ..reboot..it should give you the option to boot with CD-ROM support..choose this..

once it boots..switch to the drive it assigns to your CD-ROM drive (mine always assigns it to E:)..put your OS disk in there..

type "setup"..and you're on your way [img]smile.gif[/img]

[Razzer]

reinstall me, or buy and install xp, if that has trouble then suspect the harddrive, and reinstall then.