Replacement of Recovery CD's

[Alfred Bowman]

I run a computer room for a treatment group of disabled veterans at the local VA hospital. The hospital doesn't support our
computing activities. (We're not even supposed to have a computer room.) We rely on donations when we need to replace one of our old PC's. Recently, an nice HP Pavilion P4, Win XP was given to us. I was told that there were reliability problems and I've been checking it out. Win XP isn't behaving
properly and I would like to reinstall it. Unfortunately, the donor couldn't find the recovery CD's.

Can I get replacements for these CD's? Since the PC is long out of warranty, I would expect to pay for them. (How much?)

[Gary Cooper_1]

Hi ALfred,

Check out this recent thread, it has lots of good information.

http://forums1.itrc.hp.com/service/forums/questionanswer.do?threadId=1012744

Regards,

Gary

[Alfred Bowman]

Hi Gary,

Thanks for replying. I read the thread you cited. There was a lot of discussion that I found somewhat confusing. It didn't seem to pertain to my situation. Our Pavilion, I'm told, didn't come with a regular installation CD. Rather, it had two
recovery CD's. These can't be found. There is no recovery partition. However, the product key is on on the side of the
case.

Last year I had difficulty restoring Windows XP Home on my Compaq Presario. I got to the sixth recovery CD that I had made just after I bought the PC and couldn't finish. Since it still was under warranty, I called Compaq tech support. The rep said that she would try to help me, but if that wasn't successful, HP would send me replacement CD's. The fix was successful so this wasn't necessary. The experience suggested that HP could supply
replacement recovery CD's.

I'm sure the donated Pavilion was registered with HP, but this was several years ago. I know from experience that I cannot register it with HP now. (When I tried with an older Deskpro I was referred to ITRC.)

There is no way we could afford to purchase a retail copy of XP Home from Microsoft or from a store. We might be able to afford an OEM version, but I am not sure this would work. I was hoping that HP could supply the replacements at a reasonable price that we could afford.

If there is anywhere in HP to which I could go, I have no idea what it might be.

Otherwise the only option that I know of is to remove the NTFS partition with Delpart, reformat as Fat32 and install Windows ME. I would hate to have to do that. A Pentium 4 PC deserves better. I also would lose some installed apps that I really want to keep.

I hope you or someone else has some additional ideas.

I would like to award points but I don't know how.

Regards,

AB

PS: This is the first time I have posted a reply here. I hope it works correctly.

[Karthik_18 · Accepted solution]

Hi alfred!

what i can sugget is to call HP tech support 1-800- HP- INVENT and get a replacement QR cd and it will cost u arround $15-$20 at maximum.

Cheers

Karthik

[Alfred Bowman]

Thanks a lot for HP INVENT. I ordered the replacements today.

FYI: The cost was $23.36.

Best regards

[Rainald T]

Simply Great!

Now that the case is done, pls lock the thread using the "close thread" button.
This will avoid "Mee-too" postings and it will add a lock icon to the thread which signalizes that the case is done.

TIA
Rainald