[Kades]

The boyfriend bought a hp dv6 with windows 8 off craigslist. He got it home and lo and behold we can't download anything or open anything other than explorer. He called HP tech support and they said for $100 they would fix it remotely. I don't exactly have $100 to fork out for a tech support call so we're hoping someone might be able to help us here. Error says "Path ID unknown" error ID "0X80070005". They said it was likely a virus or something of that nature, but it's not as if we can just download Norton when we can't access the hard drive or open anything.

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Welcome to Geeks2Go Kades,

You obviously can access the drive, if you can boot up at all. What happens after that appears to be an issue though. That error is often related to Windows update. For now, see if you can access Safe Mode. Maybe things will be improved enough then so we can check further.

At startup tap the F8 key about once per half-second, then select Safe Mode with Networking from the menu that will appear.

Just post back if you accomplished that, and you have better access to the file system. Also try opening Task Manager (press Ctrl - Alt - Delete at the same time). There we can also access the file system. Do you have access to a usb/flash/thumb drive as well, so we can transfer files back and forth to the troubled computer?

[Jintan]

Welcome to Geeks2Go Kades,

You obviously can access the drive, if you can boot up at all. What happens after that appears to be an issue though. That error is often related to Windows update. For now, see if you can access Safe Mode. Maybe things will be improved enough then so we can check further.

At startup tap the F8 key about once per half-second, then select Safe Mode with Networking from the menu that will appear.

Just post back if you accomplished that, and you have better access to the file system. Also try opening Task Manager (press Ctrl - Alt - Delete at the same time). There we can also access the file system. Do you have access to a usb/flash/thumb drive as well, so we can transfer files back and forth to the troubled computer?

[Kades]

Thank you for the advice, however we managed to reformat it and now it works just fine

[Jintan]

I appreciate you taking time to post back the update. Be well.