greetings all,
Client has given me an HP pavilion 521a running WIn XP Home. When booted the machine returns an error along the lines of 'Ntldr not found'
When I boot the machine with a BARTs PE disk I can see the C: drive but it is listed as 'unrecognised' and if I attempt to access the drive a message is returned stating that the file system is unknown and that the drive is not accessible.
I have been able to recover most of the user's files from the drive using 'stellar phoenix FAT & NTFS' so at this point I simply want to reinstall windows to the c: drive.
The actual problem I'm having is that this machine comes with a recovery partition rather than recovery CDs. In theory there should be an F10 option available when booting, which will do a 'factory restore' of windows and any additional HP software, however this option is not displayed.
The recovery partition does exist. I can see it with partition magic and have been able to browse it by plugging the drive into another machine. This partition does not have a drive letter assigned to it. Partition Magic does not give me an option to unhide it or assign a drive letter.
So the question is: how can make the machine boot from this partition in order to complete a system restore?
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Yes I did try F10 repeatedly and the machine still attempts to boot from the c: drive.
I've tried every other function key as well. F1 takes you into the bios setup but the others have no effect.
BTW I beleive that I can get a set of recovery disks from HP; I just don't have time to wait for them to arrive.
Tried that early on in the process. No joy.
I think I read somewhere that these machines have a 'custom' mbr that enables access to the 'hidden' partition so 'fixing' it might actually have caused the problem. so the question remains; is there a way of repairing/replacing the mbr to solve my problem.
According to hp, you can try with a dos disk:
http://h10025.www1.hp.com/
You can try to restore the recovery partition information by entering the following at the DOS command prompt: fdisk /mbr.
Otherwise, it's suggested you order the disks :(
I've just tried that.. - It took the key on the COA during setup but rejects it when I try to activate!
I've also just tried using a Ghost boot disk to make the recovery partition active. When I restarted the machine it actually launched the HP recovery options. Lots of HP logos then, just as I was starting to get bit excited, it blue-screened with a c000021a. The previous examples I've seen of this BSOD were due to disk errors/file corruptions so there may be some problems with the recovery partition in addition to those I found on the C: drive.
I think the first thing I tried was running spinrite6 from GRC (www.grc.com) In theory it does a much better job than chkdsk at finding and recovering disk errors.
The activation did suggest a phone call. Just not sure I want to fess up to using another oem disk to get the files onto the machine.
Three things:
First:
If you've wiped the drive or deleted the partition table when you used the OEM CD's, your diagnostic partition is probably gone and you won't be able to recover it.
Second:
If you have wiped the drive, use another utility to format the drive instead of the format utility MS uses during install. I've used a windows 98se boot disk with Fdisk and Format to do just this. Break all partitions with Fdisk, create a new partition, set it active, and then format the drive with fat 32. Make sure that the CD/DVD drive is set to be a bootable device before the hard drive then follow the instructions to reinstall the OS.
Third:
Have you downloaded the drive manufactures diagnostic utilities to verify the drive is still good? I've had this problem in the past and after many hours I ran the manufactures utilities to find the drive was actually bad.
You sound like you know what your doing, but incase you need a little help on the inside of the machine, here's another article from HP.
http://h10025.www1.hp.com/
Good luck
As I mentioned above, I did the reinstall with another OEM CD but used the key on the machine's COA. When I attempted to activate the machine online it indicated there was a problem with the key and that I should contact MS. As per maramom's advice I did this and MS happily provided me with a new confirmation ID. So, the client has their machine back, and, while not thrilled about having their data scrambled a bit, they are happy not to have lost the lot. Points and thanks to maramom for the advice and timely feedback.
Another point; At the client's request, I bought the recovery CDs from HP Australia. Even thought this is an almost 5 yr old machine, it's a bit rich having to pay $AUD66 (about $US50) to get access to something they've already paid for!
And finally, I'd appreciate hearing any other suggestions about fixing the original problem with the boot records (or whatever it was) If anyone has a link to a resource that describes the structure and relationship of these records, including the partition tables, please post it.
thanks all , Peter
Business Accounts
Answer for Membership
by: maramomPosted on 2006-03-16 at 07:07:05ID: 16205606
Did you try F10 repeatedly at boot up? The message may not be displayed due to BIOS settings. Depending on your machine, the option may actually be F8.