playitloud413
New Member
Hey everyone,
I am at an absolute loss right now, as I seem to have exhausted all of my resources to no avail. As such, I turn to you in my time of need.
A friend of mine had his computer (an HP m8000n) go all sorts of wacky on him. I spent about a week trying to diagnose the problem and find a specific cause. Needless to say, I couldn't find it. The computer is just over a year old. I suggested a destructive restore and he gave me the OK to go ahead and do it.
Major problem: Tapping F11 at boot will not start the recovery process. I used a Linux boot disc to take a look at his HDD and the D:\ drive where the factory back-up is looked fine. But for whatever reason, I can't get to the recovery menu to do it.
We get a copy of the recovery DVD's from HP and I assume this would be the end of his problems. I boot with the recovery media and begin the process. Things look normal. It asks for disc 2, I pop it in, it continues. It finished the process and then says it's going to reboot and continue from there on out. Which brings us to...
Massive problem: After the computer restarts and begins the final part of the recovery, all you see is what looks to be like a full-screen version of the copy file animation. You know the one with a folder on the left and a folder on the right and the files are flying from one to the other. It's just the animation against a gray background. No words, nothing else. I let it sit there for 12 hours and nothing changed. Just the animation.
Pressing ALT+TAB while at this full-screen animation presented me with four different things (and these names are verbatim):
1.) Progresso
2.) X:\windows\system32\cmd.exe - startnet.cmd
3.) Install Windows
4.) Administrator: X:\windows\system32\cmd.exe
And no matter which one I ALT+TAB to, nothing changes. Just the animation of the flying papers.
So I decided to reboot the computer. Best case scenario (through some divine miracle), the computer works. Worst case scenario, I just run the system restore again. Computer boots up to a "BOOTMGR is missing". I tried using the Windows Vista Recovery Disc from NeoSmart and that did nothing. It didn't even see a hard drive.
I booted using GParted and wiped out his partitions and created new ones to start fresh then tried the recovery discs again. Same thing. Goes fine then an endless full-screen copy animation.
I've honestly never seen anything like this. Hopefully someone out there has. Any suggestions at all are greatly appreciated. I'm willing to try anything.
Thank you,
Henry
I am at an absolute loss right now, as I seem to have exhausted all of my resources to no avail. As such, I turn to you in my time of need.
A friend of mine had his computer (an HP m8000n) go all sorts of wacky on him. I spent about a week trying to diagnose the problem and find a specific cause. Needless to say, I couldn't find it. The computer is just over a year old. I suggested a destructive restore and he gave me the OK to go ahead and do it.
Major problem: Tapping F11 at boot will not start the recovery process. I used a Linux boot disc to take a look at his HDD and the D:\ drive where the factory back-up is looked fine. But for whatever reason, I can't get to the recovery menu to do it.
We get a copy of the recovery DVD's from HP and I assume this would be the end of his problems. I boot with the recovery media and begin the process. Things look normal. It asks for disc 2, I pop it in, it continues. It finished the process and then says it's going to reboot and continue from there on out. Which brings us to...
Massive problem: After the computer restarts and begins the final part of the recovery, all you see is what looks to be like a full-screen version of the copy file animation. You know the one with a folder on the left and a folder on the right and the files are flying from one to the other. It's just the animation against a gray background. No words, nothing else. I let it sit there for 12 hours and nothing changed. Just the animation.
Pressing ALT+TAB while at this full-screen animation presented me with four different things (and these names are verbatim):
1.) Progresso
2.) X:\windows\system32\cmd.exe - startnet.cmd
3.) Install Windows
4.) Administrator: X:\windows\system32\cmd.exe
And no matter which one I ALT+TAB to, nothing changes. Just the animation of the flying papers.
So I decided to reboot the computer. Best case scenario (through some divine miracle), the computer works. Worst case scenario, I just run the system restore again. Computer boots up to a "BOOTMGR is missing". I tried using the Windows Vista Recovery Disc from NeoSmart and that did nothing. It didn't even see a hard drive.
I booted using GParted and wiped out his partitions and created new ones to start fresh then tried the recovery discs again. Same thing. Goes fine then an endless full-screen copy animation.
I've honestly never seen anything like this. Hopefully someone out there has. Any suggestions at all are greatly appreciated. I'm willing to try anything.
Thank you,
Henry
