jetta89

So a friend got a compaq (ya i hate em) and hes not good with computers and got it loaded with spyware and viruses and just wanted it reformatted. He had windows home so i decided to give him pro. But it turns out that compaq laptops (computers also?) dont allow any windows installation without one of their recovery disks. Well seeing as compaq is cheap, they have a partition on the harddrive that has the recovery. But i didnt either of those were those, untill i tried installing windows pro (and i deleted that partition that had the recovery). So i figured it was the BIOS or CMOS that was stopping it so i took out the harddrive and put it in another laptop and installed windows xp on it. Installed fine, works fine. But when i put it back in the compaq, it gives some error saying "we apologize for inconvenience..windows didnt start up right...." and then gives me the option to boot windows normally or from last known bootable, i picked both and it keeps sending me to the same error page. So im just wondering if theres anything else i can do, or what is the real problem. I think its either the CMOS or the BIOS that like reads the signature of the OS on the harddrive..and if its not compaq whatever, it doesnt take it (my best guess). And also if anyone knows where to get compaq recovery disks...like free. (they make you pay off their website) Thanks.

ThinkQuick

Well, first of all you should install XP on the hard drive while that hard drive is in the computer that will be accessing it. You can't just go swapping hard drives. XP configures the setup for that specific computer. Nonetheless, if may just be the MBR. Try booting with a 98 disk to the prompt and do a 'fdisk /mbr' then try to reboot. If not, you must install XP on that computer.