Ivalid Disc

[Martin Todd]

My harddrive is gone, I have no restoration discs, and I cant switch to my CD-Rom Drive, what do I do? Sorry this note is sghort but i wrote a long one, and it didnt go through....

Please help!
I Have a Pavilion 9694c

[Dries Bertier]

I really don't understand what your asking. Your harddrive is gone, is it broken or not visible anymore for your OS (what OS ??) Have you tried to change bootoptions to use the cdrom ? Checked all cabling allready and used the latest bios available ??

Dries

[Martin Todd]

Basically, to expand on my note, when I turn on my computer, it says "Ivalid System Disk."
So I made a boot disk (Floppy) and I can now access Dos, but all of my harddrive is missing or erased. I have some software I can load onto the computer (i. another copy of MS windows), but I cant get it to switch to the Cd-rom drive. I have tried loading different boot options, but nothing changes. I have ordered restoration discs from HP, but I am worried this will not solve the problem. What are some other things that I can try to recover my data, i.e. do I have to wipe the hard drive and start all over...?

[Frederic Hosmann · Accepted solution]

Martin,

i think that you have to reinstall all over.
but you could try to run from your floppy disk a fdisk /mbr ( master boot record ) to repair your boot sector.

and it may occure another problem : maybe your fat tables are damaged.

in this case, you can use a Hex software( oh i loved pctools) and try to copy fat table 2 to fat table 1.

remember, it s not sure that it will work but it s a solution.

[Spirited Woman]

Hard drive may be gone. A couple of things you can do to double check. One, make sure you have no floppies or cds in any drives. Two, Boot PC and insert recovery disk one in the top cd drive, even if it is the cd-writer. Shut system down for twenty seconds before rebooting. If it boots to the recovery cd, great! If not,boot the pc, when you get the HP Invents screen, start tapping the F1 key to enter BIOS setup. On the general tab, is Primary Master listed? If yes, using the arrow keys, arrow over to the BOOT screen. Locate the BOOT DEVICE PRIORITY. You'll either see that listed, which if you do, arrow down to highlight it and press enter. You'll either see that, or after pressing enter, you'll see some numbers assigned. For example: 1. Removable disks, 2.Cd-rom, etc. You want to arrow down and highlight your cd-rom drive and press the + sign until the cd-rom is listed as device #1. Press F10 to save & exit. Insert recovery cd one and press ENTER to say yes. Power the system off for 20 seconds. If it boots to the recovery cd, press any key to continue, say yes to the user agreement - you did this when you originally set up the pc, look at the top left, you'll see ADVANCED OPTIONS, click on that and choose exit to DOS. Type FDISK at the prompt. Choose yes to enable large disk support, choose option #3 to delete partition, choose #1 to delete, choose partition to delete, usually #1, type in the volume label. It will be listed at the top of the screen. Type it exactly as it appears. If there isn't one listed, press ENTER. It will give a message that partition has been deleted. Press ESC to return to options. Choose option #1 to create partition, choose option #1 to create primary DOS partition. After this it should start verifying drive integrity. If it gives an error message saying no hard disk found, replace hard drive. If it doesn't, allow it to continue. When it asks if you want to make the partition active, type Y for yes. It will tell you to reboot. Don't remove the recovery cd yet. When it reboots, it will format the hard drive. When it is finished with that, it will return to the recovery options menu, choose RECOVERY, RECOVERY ONLY. This will reinstall the Operating System and originally installed software. Good luck!

[Spirited Woman]

PS: Sorry. Missed the part about you missing the recovery cds. You can contact HP to order a copy of the recovery disks.

[Peter Toldi_3]

"my harddrive is missing or erased."

Your hard drive not eased unless you did the above recovery.

"I have ordered restoration discs from HP, but I am worried this will not solve the problem."

You will lose all your data with recovery.


"What are some other things that I can try to recover my data, i.e. do I have to wipe the hard drive and start all"

My God ! How on earth you want to recover data if you wipe out your hard drive?
If your data is important for you, then ask for professional help, if not you can practice on your PC.

[rol1]

How about making the old, possibly damaged, disk slave or connect to the 2nd ide cable, then install windows98 on another drive.

Then copy the needed data from the old, now slave, to the new system master.

Then you can play with the old drive.

[Martin Todd]

THANK YOU TO EVERYONE THAT TRIED TO HELP ME. i DECIDED TO JUST USE THE RESTORATION DISCS. ALL IS WELL NOW SO THANKS AGAIN...