What happened?

N

Novice2000

New Member
A friend of mine has an HP mini laptop. It came with Vista, and he hates Vista. So he plugged an external usb cd player to it so he could install XP on it. The installation disk started to do a full format on the hard drive. He decided that he did not want to wait for the full format. So he powered down the computer, right in the middle of the format, so he could start over again and do a quick format. This was a big mistake, because now it won't boot. The only thing it does is to show the HP logo and that's it. It won't even let you get into the bios setup. And it won't boot off the cd player anymore so he can try the XP installation again.

He figured that he somehow corrupted the bios, so he flashed the bios off of a thumbdrive that he downloaded the file onto for doing this. This worked, it installed the new bios, but that still hasn't done any good. It still won't boot off of the cd and it still won't even let you get into the setup. If he leaves the thumbdrive plugged in to the usb port, after playing around with it, he will be able to get into the bios setup, only with the thumbdrive plugged in. But this seems like it doesn't do any good anyway, because he looked in everything and there really isn't anything he can change to make this work.

Does anyone know what happened and how this could be fixed? Any feedback would be greatly appreciated.
 
N

Novice2000

New Member
tremmor said:
Think you need a recovery disk from HP for this model.
Click to expand...

But the OS is now wiped off the computer. Will the recovery disk still work without an OS on it? Also, he used dban to finish wiping everything completely off the hd, which still didn't do any good.
 
johnb35

johnb35

Administrator
Staff member
If the machine won't boot past the bios then the recovery cd's won't do any good. As long as the machine boots and you get a message about No operating system installe, then you are fine. Another option to check is to look in the bios to see what option the SATA controller is set to. If its set to raid/ahci then you would need the controller driver to install XP. Set it to IDE mode if thats an option and then try installing XP. Just be forewarned about being able to find all appropriate XP drivers for all the hardware could be hard to find.
 
S.T.A.R.S.

S.T.A.R.S.

banned
FORMAT PROCESS MUST NOT BE CANCELED BECAUSE SOMETIMES THE BOOT SECTOR GETS CORRUPTED AND THEN YOU ARE SCREWED.SAME FOR THE BIOS...
Anyway,to fix your problem,do the following 12 steps:

1. Load BIOS optimal defaults.Save BIOS settings to CMOS and restart your computer...
2. On some other computer with the HP USB disk storage format tool 2.1.8 format your USB stick completely using the FAT32 file system and put the Windows 98 system files on it and click START to start the format and copying DOS files process...
3. After that is complete,download the DOS program called KILL DISK 4.1.Create the new folder on the USB stick,call it "KD" and put ALL the KILL DISK 4.1 files in that "KD" folder...
4. After that is complete,remove the USB stick using the SAFE REMOVE HARDWARE option in Windows OS and then unplug it from the computer...
5. Go back to your computer,plug the USB stick in the USB entrance on that computer,turn on the computer,go into the BIOS and set that USB stick as the first device to boot from,the CD/DVD-ROM drive as the second device and the HDD as the third device...
6. Save the BIOS changes to CMOS and restart your computer using the BIOS options of course...
7. After your computer has restarted,the USB stick will boot and you will be inside of the Windows 98 DOS environment.Your USB stick is now considered as the "C:" disk.So type the following command:

cd C:\KD\

Press the ENTER button on your keyboard.Now type the following command:

KILLDISK.EXE

The Kill Disk 4.1 DOS program will start.The first thing that you will see is the message which says that you are using the demo version of the Kill Disk 4.1.Just click OK and then select your HDD,(NOT THE PARTITION),press the F10 button on your keyboard then select and click the button called "CONFIRM AND ERASE" and then type "ERASE-ALL-DATA" and press the ENTER button on your keyboard...

8. The formatting process has started and it can take a VERY long time.On some HDDs that format process can take up to 19 hours so BE PATIENT AND LET IT FINISH!!!

9. After the format process is finally finished,you will get the grey window with the informations about what the Kill Disk 4.1 just did.Simply press the ESC button on your keyboard and wait untill the devices are being refreshed...

10. After the devices has refreshed,again click the ESC button on your keyboard and when it asks you are you sure that you want to exit the Kill Disk 4.1,click YES...

11. You are now again in the Windows 98 DOS environment.Now simply click the POWER SWITCH on your computer just once,(without holding it) and your computer immediately shuts down...

12. After the computer is shutted down completely,leave it like that for about 1 minute at least.After 1 minute,unplug that USB stick from your computer and VIOLA!You can now install Windows XP or any other version of Windows on your HDD.Wether you are installing Windows from its CD or DVD or from its USB device.If your computer has the CD/DVD-ROM drive,I recommend you to install Windows OS from its CD or DVD!






Cheers mate!
 
N

Novice2000

New Member
johnb35 said:
If the machine won't boot past the bios then the recovery cd's won't do any good. As long as the machine boots and you get a message about No operating system installe, then you are fine. Another option to check is to look in the bios to see what option the SATA controller is set to. If its set to raid/ahci then you would need the controller driver to install XP. Set it to IDE mode if thats an option and then try installing XP. Just be forewarned about being able to find all appropriate XP drivers for all the hardware could be hard to find.
Click to expand...

That makes sense, the bios now might not have the basic driver anymore in order to run or read off the cd player. In the state it is in now, how would I install the hp drivers on to it? Would I be able to do this somehow off the thumbdrive?
 
johnb35

johnb35

Administrator
Staff member
What happens when you turn it on without the flash drive plugged in? How far does it get?
 
N

Novice2000

New Member
wildbill said:
IIRC, recovery disc won't do any good w/o an OS. He's in better luck getting a new copy of XP.
Click to expand...

He has a copy of XP. The problem is that it won't even boot off the XP cd anymore, or any cd for that matter. He even tried the UBD and others, that are used to boot a computer, but with no luck. It just won't boot off a cd anymore. He can go into the boot menu and select to boot off the cd, but this doesn't do any good.
 
tremmor

tremmor

Well-Known Member
i agree xp installation won't do any good maybe. i read it again and had the impression the bios update went fine. On the other hand i have never taken bios updates unless i needed it. it will shut you down. done deal if the bios update goes wrong. Could try another flash. i always read what the flash did in the past. is it something i need? will i benefit from it. is it an improvement on the the motherboard or maybe make it more compatible with hardware.

if the bios is corrupted because of the flash it is party over if its corrupted. if thats the case and may be then my motherboards have supplied another flash to correct the problem.

my Toshiba recovery disk would replace to factory defaults. never used it.
have worked on a few other manufacture laptops in the past. recovery disk works fine. just to reiterate if bios is corrupted and you can't fix i think it has to be sent back to the factory.
 
johnb35

johnb35

Administrator
Staff member
tremmor said:
i agree xp installation won't do any good maybe. i read it again and had the impression the bios update went fine. On the other hand i have never taken bios updates unless i needed it. it will shut you down. done deal if the bios update goes wrong. Could try another flash. i always read what the flash did in the past. is it something i need? will i benefit from it. is it an improvement on the the motherboard or maybe make it more compatible with hardware.

if the bios is corrupted because of the flash it is party over if its corrupted. if thats the case and may be then my motherboards have supplied another flash to correct the problem.

my Toshiba recovery disk would replace to factory defaults. never used it.
have worked on a few other manufacture laptops in the past. recovery disk works fine. just to reiterate if bios is corrupted and you can't fix i think it has to be sent back to the factory.
Click to expand...

Agreed. Try taking the hard drive out of the laptop and boot up and see what happens. If it goes farther than what it has, then you have a faulty hard drive. Another option would be to download the drive makers disk diagnostic utility and put the hard drive in another system to test it.
 
N

Novice2000

New Member
johnb35 said:
What happens when you turn it on without the flash drive plugged in? How far does it get?
Click to expand...

Without the flashdrive plugged in, it won't do anything except display the HP logo. It won't even let you get into the boot menu or the bios setup. At least with the flashdrive plugged in, which has the bios flash file on it, it will allow you to go to the boot menu and the bios setup, although it still won't boot off the cd if you select that option.
 
S.T.A.R.S.

S.T.A.R.S.

banned
Just do as I said before and then simply install the Windows XP from the USB stick...

Of course if your BIOS is not working properly then consider solving THAT problem FIRST!
 
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