[blaze_1]

Hi,
I need help. I have some basic computer skills, but this is beyond me. I was having trouble with internet explorer and some other software that was oem for my Compaq Presario 1020nx desktop. I also had a puper trojan virus a few months ago that I kicked with GeeksToGo help. My hard drive was full of crap I wasn't using, plus I wanted to fix these program problems.

I tried using the windows reapir utilities and even looked up the GTG help for windows xp issues. Nothing worked. I decided to wipe the hard drive and start over. I put in the system recovery disks and went thru all 6 disks for the full system recovery. I put in my windows xp boot disk that came with the compaq. It won't boot up using the disk. I went into the BIOS mode to change the boot to the cd rom. That didn't work either. when I boot up I can get into safe mode, but get an error saying system recovery incomplete. I called HP support and paid $30 to have some guy named Nippan have my try all this stuff all over and then tell me he can't figure it out, but I can pay $199 to send it in for repairs. I told him that if it is the hard drive I can get a new one for that money with twice the size now.

Please Help! I don't want to buy a whole new PC, but if I gotta can't I just get a new hard drive and put it in this one?

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Compaq, along with H-P, has a bad habit of putting a recovery partition on the hard drive. All the recovery CD has on it is a small program that finds this hidden partition and restores from it. If you used a 6 set of boot disks to wipe and format the drive you have also wiped the hidden partition from the drive. Now you will need a retail windows XP CD to install XP back on your computer. I always recommend to people that have these computers to make a recovery cd set so they don't have a problem when a HD goes bad. I also ask them to try the cd's while the computer is brand new to make sure they work. Twice i have seen cd sets that did not work. A call to H-P let these people buy a recovery Cd that has XP on it for $50. Maybe H-P does not do this anymore but 4 months ago i did receive one of these cd's myself. My H-P XP Pro cd will only install on H-P computers, but it will install on any H-P i choose.

SRX660

[SRX660]

Compaq, along with H-P, has a bad habit of putting a recovery partition on the hard drive. All the recovery CD has on it is a small program that finds this hidden partition and restores from it. If you used a 6 set of boot disks to wipe and format the drive you have also wiped the hidden partition from the drive. Now you will need a retail windows XP CD to install XP back on your computer. I always recommend to people that have these computers to make a recovery cd set so they don't have a problem when a HD goes bad. I also ask them to try the cd's while the computer is brand new to make sure they work. Twice i have seen cd sets that did not work. A call to H-P let these people buy a recovery Cd that has XP on it for $50. Maybe H-P does not do this anymore but 4 months ago i did receive one of these cd's myself. My H-P XP Pro cd will only install on H-P computers, but it will install on any H-P i choose.

SRX660

[blaze_1]

I have it working now. It was true, the recovery disks did not have windows xp on them and the boot disk that they gave me for xp was bad. I just happened to have another win xp disk from another pc that I had. I tried it anf erything is working again, except of course now I have to reinastall everything. would it be better to have an external hrad drive for storage and keep the partition on the smaller drive?