Need to help a friend !!!

[jailor]

A friend of mine purchased an HP PC from Walmart about two years ago. It came with WinXP installed on the hardrive but no cd copy of the operating system or any other kind of reinstallation software. It appears that she has two hard drives. She has a C drive and a D drive and it appears that the D drive contains the operating system only. I'm not that computer savvy as I am not familiar with this kind of setup. The reason that I need help to help her is because she claims that she keeps getting the blue death screen. I asked her when was the last time she reinstalled a fresh copy of WinXP and this is when I found out that she never received a copy of WinXP when she bought the computer. Any suggestions to stop the blue death screen? Any suggestions about her being able to obtain a copy of the operating system so that I can reinstall it for her? Should I remove the D drive and just run everything from one hard drive? Is there any advantage to running your OS from a seperate drive?
Thanks in advance.

 

[Lorand]

Usually there's a system recovery on the PC's hard disk. What HP model is that computer exactly? If it's HP Pavilion, then here are the steps: http://www.windowsreinstall.com/install/oem/hppavilion/hp_pavilion_xppc.htm

 

[smitherz]

just because there is a C and a D it doesn't mean there is two hard drives. its most prob a partition if it was bought as a complete package. you will need a recovery disk or start a fresh with a full XP install. this means you will need to get the CD and all data will be lost. if the operating system is on D then you can save all data on C by formating D only then re-installing.

hope that helps


smitherz

 

[Praetor]

if the operating system is on D then you can save all data on C by formating D only then re-installing.

odds are the recovery stuff is on the D drive so you dont quite wanna reformat that

 

[smitherz]

true then he should back up that data before he formats it.


smitherz

 

[Praetor]

Well that would be the idea regardless

 

[smitherz]

all depends on wot he has got on there really

 

[Lorand]

The system recovery is on a hidden partition, so if you mess around with repartitioning you might loose that recovery...

 

[Praetor]

Its not hidden (not on most configurations) ... its just marked as "special" .... certainly not hidden

 

[Lorand]

Hidden or not, don't repartition the hard disk if you want to use that system recovery.

 

[Praetor]

You can repartition the drive without losing data you know....