TRYING to restore a Compaq...

AND FAILING!

Alright guys. Long time no post eh?

So my friend brings his GF's Compaq Crapario computer over. Its a newer one, probably bought earlier this year.

His genius gf had downloaded some nasty worm onto it trying to download some games. Soon the thing was unusable. So i get it. Takes a good 10minutes to boot. I used my mac to get all her pictures off and stored them.

So when the compaq boots, it says "Press F10 to enter System Recover" OK so we do that. Obviously iim dealing with a hidden partition.

I select Destructive Recovery, which stated it would reformat the user partition. Ok sweet. Figure things would be good. So 15 minutes goes by. It gets done, sweet. That was simple. Reboot. Im staring at the same infected installation i was as 15 minutes before. NOTHING was different. AT ALL. Just to make sure i ran system recovery AGAIN. Same thing. Setup was doing nothing. It claimed it was formatting, it warned me all user data would be lost.

So i bust out my copy of xp, and use it to format it. Under the format options screen i have

PARTITION 1 HRESARIOREST
PARTITION 2 C: WINDOWS XP

So i format C and am returned to

PARTITION 1 HRESARIO_RP
PARTITION 2 C: Unknown Partition (or what it usually says)

ok great.

Reboot, goes back into the system restore. Let it do its thing. It reboots, and im left with:

|-Beº$-||-Beº$-|

Thats...great...so i hit F10 again to get into system restore..SAME THING AS ABOVE

SO if i try to install a copy of XP from a regular CD, im left with "INVALID PARTITION TABLE"

And after the last Compaq System Recovery, my partition table is this:

C: Partition 1: PRESARIO_RP
D: Partition 2: [New Raw]

I THINK that has something to do with my issues. I could be wrong.

Now im not going to think about touching that repair partition. The girl was given a CD, but she didnt give it to me. So shes gonna bring it by Sunday.

ANyone have any suggestions? These things make me glad i switched

Thanks in advance guys.

MadSkillzMan said:

Now im not going to think about touching that repair partition. The girl was given a CD, but she didnt give it to me. So shes gonna bring it by Sunday.

ANyone have any suggestions?

Click to expand...

Yes. Wait until Sunday for a CD.

You need that CD to restore the system, Everything will be lost. Just be sure that the CD is for that model of compaq, or you may have to download the utility from HP (I think they have Compaqs stuff now) and then restore it using
another OS Disk.
Oh yea, Stay away from that Recovery Partition, If you lose it. They are almost always impossible to completely restore. unless you buy the proper CD from Compaq.
Compaq is such a PITA

Thanks guys.

Well what im afraid of is, the CD not being the restore CD. A friend had a dell she wasted 1500$ on, and the CD that came with it, was just drivers, that wouldnt load on any other version of XP but Dell's. Theres an option i guess to burn a recovery CD/DVD, but i highly doubt she did it.

Your choice now is to download and burn the F10 utility for that model of compaq from their support site. and cross your fingers that it does not mess with the partition while you try to recover the os.

Correct me if I'm wrong here, but I have re-installed 3 compaq laptops, now granted I never had to wipe that retarded little partition to do so....but, why can't the op just delete both partitions, format w/ NTFS, and re-install xp from scratch...sans all the compaq crap? They do have the cd key printed on the bottom/side of the case for xp, and you can just get the utility, or download the drivers directly from their site. Their site is a pain, but if the cd is correct then so much the better. Unless she's REALLY going to miss all the annoying compaq startup programs :0

redwraith94 said:

Correct me if I'm wrong here, but I have re-installed 3 compaq laptops, now granted I never had to wipe that retarded little partition to do so....but, why can't the op just delete both partitions, format w/ NTFS, and re-install xp from scratch...sans all the compaq crap? They do have the cd key printed on the bottom/side of the case for xp, and you can just get the utility, or download the drivers directly from their site. Their site is a pain, but if the cd is correct then so much the better. Unless she's REALLY going to miss all the annoying compaq startup programs :0

Click to expand...

The key probably won't work unless you have an OEM install CD but if you check the sticky regarding windows activation you'll find that you really don't need it anyway...

Any HP, Compaq, whatever I have resurrected in the past my first step is to delete both partitions, create just one new partition and perform a clean windows install using a non-manufacturer CD. That gets rid of all the extra junk (as if XP doesn't have enough overhead by default anyway lol) and as was said above, you can go download the drivers you need from the website.

Compaq's normally come with a Quick Restore CD hopefully it will let you do it even if you have formatted the op system partition. Which it should do it'll just go through the CD and let you select to format the op sys partition which it should fly by cause there's nothing there.

yeah i've had to restore a large amount of compaq's new and old, but never came accross that. the only thing ive had problems w/ was the cd not copying all the files, but a quick optical drive swap fixes that. needless to say i work at wal-mart, and i love it when i sell a computer and they come back saying that they did not get their system recovery cd. i tell them that they dont get one cuz its allready partioned on the harddrive. and they argue w/ me and tell me "well my friend or someone i know got their cd's and i want mine". it all makes me giggle that these ppl are breeding.

well

This one defeated me guys. Girl shows up today wtih no CD claiming she wasnt given one (yea right, i thought only dell did that) Claiming when she first started it, she was given the option to create a restore CD, but didnt. So before i could take your advice of installing ar egular copy of XP, she ran off with it.

Funny part is, she wants to do 3D graphics, photoshop, video etc etc..on a CELERON!

MadSkillzMan said:

no CD claiming she wasnt given one (yea right, i thought only dell did that)

Click to expand...

Dell is not the only OEM that does not provide an installation CD.

MadSkillzMan said:

Funny part is, she wants to do 3D graphics, photoshop, video etc etc..on a CELERON!

Click to expand...

What is so funny about it. Photoshop 7.0.1 runs quite well on the machine in my signiture (Adobe system requirements are overrated) and video runs fine. I can even watch DVDs. Large Shockwave-Flash objects often lag though. A Celeron Northwood is probably more than sufficient.

yeah, like i said compaq doesnt always give out restore cd's, they expect u to make a restore disk yourself. and i dont see photoshop running horrible on a newer celeron thats prob. 2.8 or above.