I have a Packard Bell Imedia 5064, got it second hand off a cousin and because all of his stuff was on it I wanted to reset the whole thing and start again. I found the master reboot files on the PC, put it onto 2 cd-r and tried to reinstall it to factory settings BUT the pc doesnt seem to recognise whats on the discs and now is stuck in reboot mode. It wont do anything. Does anyone know where I could download the master reboot files or any way to fix my pc? I'm not computer literate so english is appreciated

Can you verify iMedia 5064? I am not finding that model at Packard Bell support.

I see a few 50XX but not 5064.

Any idea what year it is approximately?

The 50XXs I am seeing are circa 2001.


...

Most definitly imedia 5064, approx 2002

Ok I will pull the data on a similar model.

I see 5060; 5067; 5068; 5069; 5070.

Also just to verify:

I take it you do not have the original Packard Bell CD for XP?

No, I dont have the original CD. Any help is greatly appreciated

Finally found it:

I MEDIA 5064 - P700401801 - iMedia VL - platform_clipper_imediaVL - Desktop

Try starting the computer and repeatedly tap the F11 key.

What is this meant to do exactly?

"reboot and select proper boot device or insert boot media in seleted boot device" is what is on the screen. Tried tapping the F11 key, nothing is happening

If Packard Bell had installed a Recovery Partition on your hard drive F11 should bring it up.

I just noted it as some searches showed similar models with this feature.

You could try accessing the XP Recovery Console via the 6 floppy boot method as seen here:

How to obtain Windows XP Setup disks for a floppy boot installation

You need to match your exact XP version there. Home; Pro; SP1; SP2; etc.

If you get that far let us know and we can suggest repair commands such as FIXBOOT.

Otherwise I am afraid you need a new operating system.

Are you familiar with ubuntu?

It is free:

Ubuntu Home Page | Ubuntu

The thing is I'm working from a laptop atm so i cant do anything involving floppys. Ok from the beginning what I did was take the Master Boot files from the PC and put them onto 2 CD-R (not sure if the files are still on the pc now), put in the first masterboot CD, turned off the pc, turned it back on and pressed F8 for the boot menu, clicked on the third option (boot from CD), from there it all went wrong, so i went to the packard bell website and looked up the pc, dowloaded Recovery Boot Disk Creator and that seemed to do something but when it asked for the master boot cd1 to be put in it says theres a problem with the files on the cd. now its coming up that the computer is not configured properly.

i have a feeling your going to tell me theres nothing that can be done

I won't say nothing can be done. Ubuntu is one choice.

Can you link me to the Recovery Boot Disk Creator you speak of?

Just noting in general most operating system setup CD's are ISO's which are images rather than data.

They initiate and run the Setup of an OS. In general a pure data CD could not Setup an OS.

However if your Recovery CD is only trying to repair the boot sector that would be a different story.

That is also what the floppies would do: repair the boot sector.

The boot sector is a separate sector on your hard drive so this whole precess assumes that your XP is still fully functional. This process is only attempting to repair the boot sector.

Also any errors you receive along the way please post them verbatim. Thanks.