Hello all,

Can anyone help me out. My friend has given me his computer to look at because its stop working! Full story is that he got a call from a so called "Microsoft". They explained that he had problems with his computer and that they could fix them. You probably know the rest of the story. Anyway what i have to work on is a Compaq Presario V6000. Basically it comes with a recovery partition but this has been destroyed or has been corrupted by the virus so i cant use that to reload Vista. He never used the HP recovery manager to burn recovery discs either so i'm kind of stuck.

Would anyone out there have this model and have any recovery discs that they can "lend" me. I know they are available from HP but they want in the region of £35 for them.

I hope someone can help.

Thanks in advance.

Does the machine have its own windows license key?

If it does you will probably have more luck getting a windows cd and doing it properly. That way you also avoid all of the pre-installed junk that will be on the recovery disk. You will probably need to download the drivers from HP afterward.

Does the machine have its own windows license key?

If it does you will probably have more luck getting a windows cd and doing it properly. That way you also avoid all of the pre-installed junk that will be on the recovery disk. You will probably need to download the drivers from HP afterward.

If you have Vista Home Premium on it and there is a key on the bottom i will happily send you a Dell Vista CD - It will work as it is just a relabelled Vista DVD basically!

If you have Vista Home Premium on it and there is a key on the bottom i will happily send you a Dell Vista CD - It will work as it is just a relabelled Vista DVD basically!

Hi.

At the present there is nothing installed on it as i have wiped it. However it came preinstalled with Vista Home Premuim. The COA sticker on the bottom of the notebook reads: Windows Vista Home Premium OEMAct HP. If i were to use the Dell CD to restore will i have to input the Product Key? The reason i ask is that the product key is quite hard to read as it has smudged over the years.

Edited 16 February, 201115 yr by Guest

Hi.

At the present there is nothing installed on it as i have wiped it. However it came preinstalled with Vista Home Premuim. The COA sticker on the bottom of the notebook reads: Windows Vista Home Premium OEMAct HP. If i were to use the Dell CD to restore will i have to input the Product Key. The reason i ask is that the product key is quite hard to read as it has smudged over the years.

You would have to put the key in as the disc will detect the hardware isn't Dell and flag up for activation....

You would have to put the key in as the disc will detect the hardware isn't Dell and flag up for activation....

OK doke. Would putting the product key from the laptop allow it to pass activation then? Sorry for all the questions.

Yes it will just flash up asking for the key - when you put that in you may need to call MS but should activate online. I do it all the time as the amount of PC's and laptops i repair where they can't find the discs is unreal!!

Yes it will just flash up asking for the key - when you put that in you may need to call MS but should activate online. I do it all the time as the amount of PC's and laptops i repair where they can't find the discs is unreal!!

If you dont mind posting me a Dell CD that would be great. Everything is worth a try. Would you want anything for it?

If you dont mind posting me a Dell CD that would be great. Everything is worth a try. Would you want anything for it?

Don't worry - just PM me your address and ill post it out to you.

Don't worry - just PM me your address and ill post it out to you.

Cheers.

PM'd.

I have an HP/ Compaq 6720s with Vista Home Premium and I burnt the recovery disc when I first bought it, if that's any use to you.

I have an HP/ Compaq 6720s with Vista Home Premium and I burnt the recovery disc when I first bought it, if that's any use to you.

jrw sorting me out with a Dell Restore disc but if you wouldn't mind posting me a copy of the recovery disc you've burnt it wouldn't do any harm.

You could try Gparted, which will allow you to access the drive and flag the hidden recovery section as a boot drive. Then it will boot straight in recovery as if you had put the disc in, I'm pretty sure this works with HP machines, although don't quote me on that, this maybe a bit easier for you in the long run as you won't have to go digging round for drivers etc

Some restore discs are only there to get you into the hidden partions, and don't actually hold much recovery data.

If you need more help let me know.

Vista sucks bumholes. Why not put an evaluation copy of 7 on the machine, thus encouraging your friend to part with 70 odd quid to get some decent OS.

You could try Gparted, which will allow you to access the drive and flag the hidden recovery section as a boot drive. Then it will boot straight in recovery as if you had put the disc in, I'm pretty sure this works with HP machines, although don't quote me on that, this maybe a bit easier for you in the long run as you won't have to go digging round for drivers etc

Some restore discs are only there to get you into the hidden partions, and don't actually hold much recovery data.

If you need more help let me know.

Tried the GParted route as you said. Was able to flag the drive as active. Unfortunately though once i installed Vista it will not boot, instead displaying startup repair. It cant find anything wrong however and just goes round in a loop every time i reboot.

Tried the GParted route as you said. Was able to flag the drive as active. Unfortunately though once i installed Vista it will not boot, instead displaying startup repair. It cant find anything wrong however and just goes round in a loop every time i reboot.

I had that on a Compaq the other week. Try going into the console or whatever its called on Vista and do a chkdsk /r. This will actually do something instead of what Vista does automatically and just does a chkdsk without the /r so doesn't actually do anything!

Disc posted so you will get it Sat or Mon!

Disc posted so you will get it Sat or Mon!

Cheers.

This has just rung a bell with me! I did a Compaq one the other week....The chap switched it off accidently when doing a system restore as he'd installed some spyware or something, again by accident :wonder:

The machine wouldn't boot, the recovery partition was none existent and the Vista CD wouldn't boot back up after install. Turned out after taking the drive out and running a disk check on it there were some errors which Windows (on my machine) fixed. Put the Hard drive back in and Vista installed with no problem.....so as it seems like a similar issue i would go down the disk checking route

This has just rung a bell with me! I did a Compaq one the other week....The chap switched it off accidently when doing a system restore as he'd installed some spyware or something, again by accident :wonder:

The machine wouldn't boot, the recovery partition was none existent and the Vista CD wouldn't boot back up after install. Turned out after taking the drive out and running a disk check on it there were some errors which Windows (on my machine) fixed. Put the Hard drive back in and Vista installed with no problem.....so as it seems like a similar issue i would go down the disk checking route

Trying a chkdsk/r just now. Looks like there have been bad clusters in quite a lot of files. Its been stuck at 10% for a while now. Will let it run for a few hours and take it from there. If no joy with Vista will look at putting Linux on it to see if it runs.

If it is stuck or goes backwards that is a good sign! It tells you that it is working on something and hopefully fixing it!

If it is stuck or goes backwards that is a good sign! It tells you that it is working on something and hopefully fixing it!

Hopefully. Or i maybe :'(

Hopefully. Or i maybe :'(

Well i have just had to order a new HDD for a Tosh laptop i'm repairing....Just got the flashing _ when booting. Managed to recover 20GB of music and photos after formatting and repairing the disk...Wouldn't risk putting that back in though as it found faulty clusters and has the clicking of doom when reading.

Well i have just had to order a new HDD for a Tosh laptop i'm repairing....Just got the flashing _ when booting. Managed to recover 20GB of music and photos after formatting and repairing the disk...Wouldn't risk putting that back in though as it found faulty clusters and has the clicking of doom when reading.

At least you managed to save some of the owners docs. That'll keep them happy. I'm always banging on to my mates about backing up but they never, ever do it. The hard disc light is still lit in the compaq so i'll just let it run and see what kind of outcome i get.

At least you managed to save some of the owners docs. That'll keep them happy. I'm always banging on to my mates about backing up but they never, ever do it. The hard disc light is still lit in the compaq so i'll just let it run and see what kind of outcome i get.

HaHa i do the same but i bet that you never back up

I know that i am guilty but i do back my photo's up to a separate drive (currently 80GB photos) but can't justify backing up over 1.5TB of all my other junk!

Let me know how you get on

HaHa i do the same but i bet that you never back up

I know that i am guilty but i do back my photo's up to a separate drive (currently 80GB photos) but can't justify backing up over 1.5TB of all my other junk!

Let me know how you get on

After nearly losing all my photos of my new born son i turned into a backup freak. I backup and image both my computers weekly to external hard drives. One which i keep away from my home. Just been doing some research on chkdsk on Vista and looks like it could take hours to complete so looks like the computer will be left on all night. SWMBO will kill me!