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XP system recovery/Unable to create user partition


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#1
TN1

TN1

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Hi,

After searching on system recovery, I have seen related topics but nothing exactly the same...

Background: HD crashed on HP Pavilion PC running XP Home so installed new HD and tried to restore system using system recovery CDs ordered from HP.

After loading 7 CDs, the system recovery stopped with the error message, "Cannot create user partition! System recovery cannot continue!"

After some info from HP, created 6 floppy boot disks for XP Home, ran boot disk and deleted existing partition created by system restore. Restore worked but then system became infected before anti-virus software was installed.

Now, redoing the whole process but cannot get past error message, "Cannot create user partition! System recovery cannot continue!" Am I missing something obvious??

System hardware is identical to original confg. Thanks for any help.
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#2
gerryf

gerryf

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Download a boot floppy (win98se works well) from www.bootdisk.com

Reboot with floppy in the drive and system configured to check floppy first.

at A:\> prompt, type

fdisk

choose step 4 --display partition info

report back...I have...a theory
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#3
TN1

TN1

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OK. I found the following:

C: Partition 1 Status A Type PRI DOS Volume Label HP_RECOVERY MByte 4400 System FAT32 Usage 20%

I then deleted the partition and tried loading the 7 system recovery CDs but it stopped at the same error, "Cannot create user partition".

Any suggestions?
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