How do I fix my Hewlett Packard operating system?

Question

I have the CD's to reformat the hard drive or to fix my operating system. I can't get into my system, cuzz it keeps on going in circles and wont boot up the OS. Can anyone lead me in the right direction into what I should do first. I don't want to wipe out my whole hard drive, but if I have to, I will do it. Can someone assist me on the first step on how to do this. My computer is a Hewlett Packard Pavillion and is operating on windows 98. Please help?

Answer 1

Recovering from the recovery disks
----------------------------------------------

The Windows operating system (OS) can be reinstalled, using the recovery disks, without destroying any existing programs or user data. This action is normally only performed if the PC does not start properly or does not boot into the Windows operating system.
To preserve the user data, copy or backup the user data to an external storage device before performing this task.
Do the following actions to reinstall the operating system from the set of recovery disks.
Connect PC to the AC power adapter.
Open the disk drive, insert the first disk in the set of recovery disks, and close the disk drive.
Turn off the PC.
Press the Power button to start the PC and immediately press the F11 key.
The PC begins operation from the disk and performs tests on the hard drive. After a short delay, a black screen, with a message, is displayed. If the C:\ drive and the special recovery partition are intact, three options are available:
Press 'R' for standard System Recovery options .
Press 'F' to format the hard drive and reinstall the original factory settings. All data will be lost!
Press 'Q' to Quit this menu.

WARNING: If the disk tests indicate that the operating system is not installed or the drive is corrupted, the only option presented is 'R' perform a full system recovery. This option will reformat the drive and destroy all the user data. See Before reformatting the hard drive for more information.

Select the standard System Recovery option by pressing R.
The recovery process will check for the presence of the recovery partition on the hard drive.

If the partition and the recovery files exist, the rest of the recovery process is performed from the hard drive, and none of the recovery disks is requested.

If the partition or the recovery files do not exist, prompts are displayed to insert or exchange disks as needed from the set of recovery disks.

When the OS is reinstalled and the PC re-starts, the programs and data files exist on the hard drive; however, clicking on the menu icons will not start the program. It is necessary to reinstall the programs using the original product disks.

All the best

Answer 2

when you turn on the system you need to enter into the bios. the screen will tell you to push a certain key on the keyboard to enter setup. it is usually F1, F2, F8, or the delete key.

when you get into the bios, find the boot sequence setting and set it to boot from the cdrom first. insert the windows cd or recovery disk into the cd drive, save your changes in bios and exit.

the computer will now boot and read the contents of the disk first and start the recovery process.

Answer 3

first u have 2 set ur bios booting options to:

1st boot- cd-rom
2nd boot- floopy
3rd boot -HHD

than insert cd and restart ur pc it will ask u to boot from cd,but this way u will wipe out all ur data....whereas u can try 2 backup ur harddisk using ur friends computer

Answer 4

Check that you are not starting the machine with a floppy, cd or memory card in. If not, your hard drive may have failed.