Recovery CDs

[seanmark2]

When I bought my XP home edition about a year ago I had some problem which asked for a certain number CD which I did not have. I contacted HP and they sent me a series of recovery CDs-- 8 of them in all. No instructions of what to do with them.. About a week ago I had a problem with my computer and after a week the person said it had to have a full recovery. Would any of you know if I could have done this myself ,with the CDs I have, rather than waiting 10 days to get my unit back.
Seanmark

[bailey]

the main problem I see is your trying to use a xp-home cd on your system instead of the recover cd that came with it and doing this can and will make it more diffcult to do anything,
the second problem is the support recover cd are a nother problem that does not always work.
xp will not have all the drivers on the cd that is needed to run all the hardware that is in the system, and you need the correct recover cd to be able to find all the drivers you maght need.

[John Prophet]

"When I bought my XP home edition about a year ago I had some problem which asked for a certain number CD which I did not have."------you bought an HP comp that came with XP home? and then you had a problem and it asked for a certain number cd? I dont quite get that.....it asked for a cd with a certain serial number on it? Either way if I had a new comp Id be asking hP to fix it under warranty.



Of course..with the help of techimo, you probably could have fixed it yourself.....

But, sometimes recovery cd's are just "images" and you cant really just get one file off of them.

Sometimes you get recovery cd's and a regular xp cd.

Sometimes the recovery cd is an "image" and sometimes its more like just cd's of the programs which have to be re-installed.

[imac9556]

Hi,
I helped a friend to resotre his hp pc by the recover disks. What you need to do is to put in Disc 1. Turn on the computer. There should be a key you push to start the computer from another source, instead of the hd. (maybe need to change bios settings). But make it boot from the cd. then the recovery process should start

[HPstinks]

HP recovery disks what a joke.

I have a 3 yr waranty with HP and after 5 1/2 weeks (no line since Dec 13) I've been without my PC.

The HDD died on Dec 13. I have a custom built XP sysytem (big mistake as that puts you in special support) In this time I have found that HP refuses to send any parts out for this PC (that was after the helpdesk ordered a new HDD to be shipped to me 4 times being cancled each time).

So next they told me to buy ad HDD and they would pay for it and I could load the recovery CD's. Ha! They will not load. Won't even start.

So next they sent out a tech for an 'in home' repair. He tried to install the CD's got the same error, says there should be some additional software to install on the new HDD first. Also just for kicks HP had him replace my mother board to make sure that wasn't the problem. Now I've got 2 mother boards as HP didn't ask for it to be returned.

Finally, they said they would do a bench repair. So I sent it in with the new HDD HP told me to buy (I told them I wasn't giving them the bad drive since I could recover the data). They had it for one day and all they did was say "this isn't the original HDD that's the problem".

I was a little ticked after that.

So next they told me that the only way to get it repaire was to send in the original HDD with the tower for repair (which means I would lose all my data).

Side note. If you ever need to recover data off a bad HDD I highly recommend ACR Data Recovery (http://www.data-recovery-software.com/) as this is unfortunately the 3rd HDD I've recovered using their software (I have already used it to get some of the key files off the bad HP HDD so I know the data is still there).

After much yelling, they finally came back to me and said they could send out a tech for an 'in home' repair with an imaged HDD. Well we'll see that is supposed be this Wed. but I can see from HP's site that the HDD has yet to ship for my repair order.

I figure from the actual 20 hours I've had tech support on the phone, the new mother board, the printer carteridges they sent me (to make me happy in the first week of this), 2 in home support calls and fedexing my PC for repair that HP has spend $3,000 - 4,000 trying to repair a 2 year old PC that originally cost $1,500.

So much for recovery disks.

HP stinks!

[Xtreeme]

Hehehe. Another happy propriatary pc owner.
Wanna know what prolly was wrong with the other hdd. I make recover disks for pc's I build custom useing b's recorder gold. ITs a image. Contains a snap shot of your hdd. THing is-it MUST be the same exact partition size. Not one itty bitty diff. Or it will NOT work. At all. If the new hdd was either a diff size-diff brand (load sector different etc) or diff partiton sizes then orginal it will not restore. It litteraly cant. Id assume that was your problem there and of course HP techs are about as bright as a 1/2 watt bulb. They all are. Dell HP the infamous and now dead Packard-Bell (well still going in Europe) and Compquack.

[seanmark2]

Thanks for all the answers. I now have my comp back and have to start reloading all backed up data. It's going to be fun?
Seanmark

[HPstinks]

Well, isn't that just great. Too bad no one at HP understands that.

Also pitiful that they won't send me a HDD, which would have solved this problem in a couple of days instead of 5 weeks and still going on.

Maybe I should order a new HP PC with an 80GB HDD and swap them and send the new one back saying its HDD was bad?

So HP sets up their PC's so that you can't upgrade the HDD with the software you bought a liscense to. Just amazing.

[Xtreeme]

Well if you catch them in time they OWE you the original win XP cd they used to make the image. It belongs to the pc not to HP under any circumstances. I got on the horn with HP for my buddy last year demanded a disk told them what I KNEW about the cd sit. And they sent one out. They try to charge you shipping. Tell them to stuff that too-cause they have "your xp cd" essentially. Which is wrong. Tell them to read the Windows XP home edition EULA (end user liscense agreement) the cd belongs to the pc. Not them. And no restore cd's dont count. Were talkign the original XP cd and code. The one they used befor ethey imaged the drive for this reason right here. Hdd problems. My friend resized his partition with P magic and didnt know any better. So he was kinda in same situation. See there is a hidden partition they use. THey dont want you to know about. LOL. And he dumped it. Got real XP cd from them. Problem fixed in under a hour.

[HPstinks]

Maybe a victory for the little guy.

HP is punting on this problem. Instead of sending me the XP discs they've decided to just build me a new PC.

This PC will have cost HP about $6,000, instead of sending the correct discs or a $150 HDD.