I just worked on a customers PC and with the help of HP, I turned a computer into a big doorstop. Fortunately for me, there was nothing that I could do to prevent what was about to happen.
If you don’t already know, many computers like HP to name the one I was working on, do not come with system recovery discs. There is a recovery partition that will backup your computer in the event it crashes but you are supposed to create a recover disc if your hard drive fails. Well… My customer as I’m sure most people do, did not make a recovery disc. When I received the computer it was too late. We needed to do a full reformat using the hard drive recovery partition and we followed the steps to do it, hit F10 and select Destructive Recovery. Here is where HP has really screwed up. The system reformatted the C drive first and then opened up the recovery for installing it. This might seem to make sense but I wish HP would make a system to scan the recovery partition first because when the computer tried to install Windows, we got error after error and it was obvious we could not do the restore. Since we reformatted the C drive, we could no longer boot Windows and had no way of fixing it. It is likely that the recovery partition was corrupt which means creating a recovery disc would not work either. The computer went from a virus infested working Windows to a 30 pound doorstop. I dont know if this is a hard disk error or because their is a new virus that is really, really bad.
Fortunately, HP will save you for a small fee. I was able to order a 1-2 day shipping of an XP recovery disc for $30, 5-7 day shipping costs $16. If you don’t want to do this like my customer and I, please make your recovery disc when your computer prompts you or find out how to do it after you have already started using your computer