Formatting HD and reinstalling XP without CD

D

dloreski

New Member
Hi all.
I'm not great with computers, so please bare with me here.
I have a 3 year old HP Pavilion A320N desktop computer.
It hasn't been running great lately and I would like to format the HD and reinstall Windows XP Home.
HP didn't give me a Windows XP CD and the operating system is on a partioned section of the HD.
I know if I had a Windows CD this would be easy to do.
Is there any way of getting around this without one?
 
If you dont have the restore CD that came with your HP, or a Windows XP CD, then im afraid it cant be done. The only thing i can think of is contacting HP, and see if they can mail you another copy of the restore CD.
 
look on the HP website, you say it has a restore partition, then all you need to do is press the right keys and it will reformat and reinstall for you, but you need to look up how to get access to the partition
 
I believe that HP uses the F10 key to start the System Restore
Partition.

As someone already mentioned, you really need to see
if you have the option to burn the recover cd's BEFORE
you try to wipe it out in case it doesn't work correctly. Some
HP's had this option and some didn't. It is usually under a program
heading that says HP or HP Tools, etc. If you don't have the
option to burn the cd's then you can try to access the recovery
partition by pressing the F10 key. It will sometimes display the
key right after you turn on the computer.

If none of this works then you can contact HP about purchasing
the recovery cd's. They will need to know the model number.
Last I checked they ran about $12 and $10 shipping.
 
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