[sherrylander]

Hello, I went on vacation for 10 days, shutting down and unplugging my computer (HP Pavilion 724c) before I left. When I returned, upon turning on the computer, I get a boot disk error. There is nothing in the floppy. When I rebooted, I hit the F1 at the blue screen. It appears to see the master, giving me a number there and specs for the hard drive. There is not slave drive. I opened up the computer, cleaned out the dust, and checked the cables as best I could. I do not have an HP system or recovery disk set --- I have that ordered and am expecting it in the next day or so. I do have a compaq disk set so put it in, even though it is for XP professional version. I can get to the c:/ prompt, but don't have a clue as to what to do next. Should I wait for the HP recovery set, try something with the c:/, or take it somewhere to have it looked at? Thank you very much for your patience with this relative novice and for your help.

Best regards, Sherry in Virginia

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when you get to that c:\ prompt in the recovery console type chkdsk /f and let that run to completion (about 45 min or so) report any errors (there is a chance that the /f switch will not work...if it doesn't replace that with /r)

[dsenette]

when you get to that c:\ prompt in the recovery console type chkdsk /f and let that run to completion (about 45 min or so) report any errors (there is a chance that the /f switch will not work...if it doesn't replace that with /r)

[sherrylander]

Hello, Thanks again for the help. When I get to the C:\ and type in chkdsk /f it says "The parameter is not valid. Try /? for help." When I replace the f with /r it says "The specified drive is not valid, or there is no disk in the drive."


Some other things I typed in after chkdsk and the response are:

chkdsk a: "The volume appears to contain one or more unrecoverable problems."

chkdsk e: "The volume serial number is 317a-51ba. The volume appears to be in good condition and was not checked. Use /p if you want to chek the volume anyway. 480978 kilobytes total disk space 0 kilobytes are available. 2048 byes in each allocation unit. 240489 total allocation units on disk. 0 allocation units available on disk.

chkdsk d: "The volume appears to contain one or more unrecoverable problems."

anything else following chkdsk (chkdsk c: etc.) I get message "The specified drive is not valid, or there is no disk in the drive."

Hope this doesn't mean my hd is dead!
Sherry

[dsenette]

well...do you know what those other letters normally went to?

[sherrylander]

a is the floppy

the other things it has are a partition on the hard drive for recovery, a dvd rom, and a burner. Sorry, I just can't remember which is which letter wise. Is there somewhere on the bios setup I can look for that? I feel like a real idiot for not knowing. Sherry

[dsenette]

e: is probably your HD...given the size its reporting..(assuming you have one HD) d is probably your optical drive...hence the unrecoverable sectors......i think with HP you can do a full system recovery (called a destructive recovery...meaning you'll lose everything on the computer) by pressing i think...shift + f10 during boot...ths would restore your computer to factory settings..i believe the recovery disks (have you gotten those yet?) allow for a non destructive recovery (just replaces windows)...if you want to try the destructive option..you can take the HD out of the busted computer...put it into a working computer as a slave...and copy out all of your important documents and photos and music...then do the destructive recovery after putting it back into the HP...

[sherrylander]

I hopefully will get the disks today. I think I'll wait for them and try the nondestructive first, then if that doesn't work, do as you said re destructive. I'll keep you posted. Thanks for your help. Sherry

[sherrylander]

Well, the bad news is....I had to get a new hard drive. Sigh. Thanks for your help, anyway.


Sherry

[dsenette]

sorry it ended up that way...thanks for letting us know