Okay I'm trying to fix my girlfriend's computer. I was receiving blue screen of death errors and would not let me boot into Windows. I tried last know configuration and safe mode and nothing works. I was able to use a linux operation system to boot off cd and recover personal files. I ordered the hp pavillion system restore cd's. I tried using them yesterday and at 51% completion it freezes. I turned off the computer and retried and same thing happened at 51% again. I let the laptop run for 15 mins at the freezing point but eventually the laptop started to get really hot so I turned it off. I'm clueless on where to go from here. Any help would be appreciated. Thanks, Gilbert. I'll try to upload a pic of the freezing point later in the evening.

I would boot to that Linux disk again and run a diagnostics on the hard disk. If you can determine the disk maker, download the diagnostics from the maker and run that on it.

It maybe the laptop is overheating.

When you laptop freezes at 51% if you immediately restart your laptop and enter the bios

and check what the cpu temperatures are.

If it is and over heat problem it could just need a bit of spring clean to remove any dirt in the vents.


Jim

The program I was using to recover the files was SLAX. I'm not too familiar with the program and don't think their is a diagnostic tool in the SLAX system. Any other ideas? I'm not at home right now to check the temperature using BIOS, but I'll give it a shot. Just doesn't make sense that it would stall at exactly the same place if it was a overheating issue.

There are many Possible reasons why it freezes at 51%.
As Digerati suggest it could possibly be hardrive problem.
The installation reaches a bad sector on the hard drive it cannot install to or get passed it will freeze at that point.

The BSOD you talked about at the beginning could have related to overheat. But without knowing the message we cannot say that for certain.
Your laptop and cpu are working their hardest when doing a factory reset via the CD so once you start the factory reset it formats the hard drive. So you have no OS to show a BSOD and the laptop freezes when it reaches the overheat temp point.
It maybe neither of the above are the problem. But they're normally easy to check and rule out quickly. Before moving on to more involved procedures.
I've never worked with SLAX either but I would think it will have a hardware information utility were you can find the make and model No
of your hard drive. With that information you could go to the hard drive makers web site. Download the diagnostic utility. Burn it to CD and then use it on the laptop to check the hardrive. If not then a Ubuntu or Mandriva live CD will do for the above.

Jim