Hi there, I'm new to this forum and I've been looking everywhere for some help! Basically, I have a packard bell easynote R1938 which may have a corrupt hard drive. One day I switched it on and got the error message "no bootable cd in atapi cd rom" so checked the boot order but everything was normal, so I tried the F11 recovery programme. It didn't get to 100% before it said that an error had occured and the computer had to shut down. I tried the packard bell technical helpline, who didn't have any more answers and said I would need to buy the recovery media since a back-up disk wasn't made at the start (I was given it already set up so I had no idea about this).
The recovery media costs £37 but surely there must be some other way? I can't really afford the new cd but I found this:
http://support.packardbell.com/uk/it...ppn=P842016301
It won't boot up with it though, and every time I switch it on I get the error message then it runs straight through to the recovery programme.
I am really worried about this because even though its under warranty, it looks like I might need to buy a cd which might not even work.
If anybody could give me advice, I would be very grateful. Thanks

Your computer:

http://support.packardbell.com/uk/it...&pn=PB42B01101

Has a Hitachi hard drive. Here is their diagnostic:

http://www.hitachigst.com/hdd/technolo/dft/dft.htm

As to that boot disk it just loads the Recovery Console. Here you have a few limited options. In your case the following might be tried:

1) FIXBOOT

2) FIXMBR

3) BOOTCFG

If none of these work you will need an XP CD.