what to do after hard disk change?

[paulot]

Hello
im new here and need a little help..
i have been searching around this site and found some help but i still need some advice...

i have a labtop and its a HP pavilon zv5000 (windows XP home edition)
one day it decided to turn itself off and not work again
i did the tests ( self tests..) and then it said that i needed to replace the hard disk, so i did.
now i dont know whether i need a recovery cd or not.. or what do i need to do to make it work..
i turn the labtop on and it wont go pass a black screen saying :
"INVALID PARTITION TABLE" ...
so anyone know what should i do?
oh i dont have a recovery cd....
and i really dont care if i loose all the data...

thanks for any help..



hope this is the right forum.

 

[Osiris]

http://www.microsoft.com/resources/documentation/windows/xp/all/proddocs/en-us/bootcons_fixmbr.mspx



So you dont have an XP cd?

 

[paulot]

No i dont..
i contacted hp and they gave a link and i bought one..

 

[Osiris]

so you can reinstall if you need too? did you look at the link?

 

[talldude123]

do you have a different OS? windows 2000 or 98?

 

[EricB]

No i dont..
i contacted hp and they gave a link and i bought one..

make them give you one for free.

 

[talldude123]

use linux, i have heard its free, i just dont know how to get it.

 

[EricB]

partition your hard drive

 

[straightv6]

use linux, i have heard its free, i just dont know how to get it.

you can either download it for pay a couple of bucks for a cd

 

[paulot]

nah they wouldnt give it for free.. i got the labtop a couple of years ago.


oh and right now i am at my bros computer mine wont get past the black screen.