I have a HP Pavilion with XP-Home SP2 which crashed. The bios recognizes all drives, etc. I can get to the blue screen to recover (F10) but doing even the destructive recovery will not work as it can't find the files (every file says "can't find"). This machine doesn't come with a boot disk. I've ordered one from HP but that's a week or two away ($100 in support costs and I'm still 2 weeks out).

The original problem said "missing NTFS". I loaded one from another computer using its start-up disk (Win-ME; probably going to cause trouble - I'm desperate to get this machine working even if I lose the files; the file showed 0 bytes in DOS). It now hangs up with a "missing NTLDR" error. The does not appear to be a file in the directory, but it won't let me copy a new one saying "file in use or missing authorization". I've tried downloading other WIN XP SP2 start-up disks without success.

Is there a way to get to my system restore and reload Win XP?

Is there a place to get a NTLDR file which will work? ...even if I have to rebuild one file at a time!

Thanks in advance

I had that problem try this www.computerhope.com/issues/ch000465.htm

Yep, been there. It looks as though my XP is corrupt. The next step is to boot from a recovery CD (see under XP). I don't have this and that next step is what I'm looking for hope...are the files available that I can burn a recovery CD on another computer? If so, where? Otherwise, I'm down for a couple weeks waiting on snail mail...

Thanks!

As your machine doen't come with a recovery disk are all the files stored on a partion of your hard drive?

Yes, they are partitioned on the hard drive in an area that requires the recovery program to access. Unfortunately, my recovery can't seem to access it...?

Basically, if I boot up normally, I get the missing NTLDR error (black screen). If I boot up hitting F1, I can see/adjust the bios (blue HP screen). If I boot up hitting F10 I get to the blue HP screen for recovery. Neither the non-destructive nor the destructive recovery can find the files to perform the recovery...? HP also suggested booting up hitting F8, but this doesn't do anything and I just get the black screen error.

B.P.

That's a bit of a beggar... how come the machine didn't have a recovery disk ? I should imagine you could get XP sp2 for less than $100.........OEM versions is about £50.00 here about $90

HP doesn't provide a recovery disk with their Pavilions...which is about the most ridiculous thing I've ever encountered. At $199 for XP (I checked this weekend) I'm not interested in re-investing in a machine that already has Win-XP on it....I just can't get to it. HP suckered me out of $100 already as they told me it was a software issue and "if I renewed my service contract" ($75) they'd help me through it -- I figured to fix it today, I'll pay. Then I stumped their techs and they are shipping me a recovery disk for $25 via snail mail. So I probably would have been better off paying $199 and having XP in my hand.

If a recovery disk is not available, I'll wait for my HP recovery disk to arrive and get back on-line with my new warranty service -- it's just creating major inconvenience right now and I'd love to know if there's a way around the problem. I guess the recovery files are just to PC-specific to be available on-line...?