Trying to reformat XP on HP laptop, need help

[Baez]

Not HP's system. Windows format system. You can format the drive that way. By all means use HP's recovery tool.

 

[PENGUINKK]

Okay, I didn't know which suggestion you were refering to. But my initial problem was that I don't know how to access HP's recovery.

 

[v8killaz]

my bad i have an older laptop which came with the cd

 

[KSoD]

How old is the laptop and are you sure that they put a Recovery Partition on there?

 

[PENGUINKK]

About four years old. I would think they would have included it if they didn't give me a disc. But I've been researching around and I found one forum post where some guy had the same problem, and it turned out the recovery wasn't installed. It's alright though, I think I can secure a disc somehwere....

 

[Alvin.C]

Hello,

To access the 'HP Recovery Manager' during the POST sequence (power on sequence) you need to press F11 on an HP Pavilion ze2200 Notebook. Note that the functionality of this feature depends on the existence of a working recovery partition.

But first things first:

1. Have you created a set of recovery discs? This is very important, especially because your laptop came with the OS pre-installed, with no system recovery or OS installations discs provided. This should have been done when the computer is first used.
2. Secondly, have you still got the recovery partition on your hard drive?

If you still have the recovery partition on your hard drive, create a set or recovery discs using the 'PC Recovery Disk Creator utility' which should be located at Start > All Programs > System Recovery > Create Recovery Discs. If not located there, look for a similar entry in the start menu programs list, or 'C:\Program Files'.

If no recovery partition exists, and/or you can't access the recovery manager, then the only solution would be to obtain a Windows XP Installation CD, or a set of Recovery Discs, and re-install the OS, or perform a system repair (the former being advised). You can order a set of Recovery Discs from HP by contacting HP support.

Note that you should back-up any important data, even before attempting a non-destructive recovery. For more information about system recovery for your particular notebook model, see: Using the PC Recovery Solution*