[jmikel09]

Hi, I thought I had a virus on my HP Pavilion laptop that's about 5 years old, so after saving my files I wiped the hard drive using a disk erase program and then went to reinstall Windows XP from the recovery DVDs that came with the computer. The first time, the reinstall seemed to go well until halfway through when progress froze at 52%. I left it for an hour and it never got further than that. So I ejected the DVD and tried to start over, and ever since then the recovery DVDs will not even boot up. The computer will boot other disks so I know the optical drive is fine. The recovery disks could be bad but that seems unlikely considering they worked the first time, at least for a while. Now when I start the computer, set to boot from the disk drive, the disk starts and stops repeatedly for about a minute like it's trying to boot from the DVD but can't. Then it moves on to trying to boot from the hard drive and I get an "MBR Error 1" or "MBR Error 2" message. I've even tried the disks with another hard drive in the computer and they still wouldn't boot, though I didn't get the MBR errors afterwards. I've run out of things I know to try. Please help! Thanks in advance.

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Welcome to GeekstoGo

Which model of Pavilion please.

The formatting of the drive with a general utility may NOT have been the best idea, if the drive had a recovery partition depending on which actual format you commissioned.

That said some HP`s that are supplied with discs do not have the recovery partition. However some do and that partition restores as it was when sold.
Whereas the disc sometimes is only a reinstall disc for XP.
This sort of setup is particularly common on Dell laptops.

From what you have said, it may well be the disc, albeit that it ran in the first instance.
This tends to be supported by the fact that it will not now run with another hard drive.

If you put the disc in ANOTHER computer, do not of course let it run, can you then open it and explore the files on it.

[Macboatmaster]

Welcome to GeekstoGo

Which model of Pavilion please.

The formatting of the drive with a general utility may NOT have been the best idea, if the drive had a recovery partition depending on which actual format you commissioned.

That said some HP`s that are supplied with discs do not have the recovery partition. However some do and that partition restores as it was when sold.
Whereas the disc sometimes is only a reinstall disc for XP.
This sort of setup is particularly common on Dell laptops.

From what you have said, it may well be the disc, albeit that it ran in the first instance.
This tends to be supported by the fact that it will not now run with another hard drive.

If you put the disc in ANOTHER computer, do not of course let it run, can you then open it and explore the files on it.