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System Recovery Problem

17 years ago

As I wrote in a previous post, I have a Compaq Presario desktop approx 4 yrs old with an AMD Athlon processor. I did a system restore rather removing the updates after a SP3 update and then further updates messed up my computer and that really messed up my computer. I emailed HP Tech Support and got instructions to do a non destructive recovery. After I did that I had several error message and appearance problems which couldn't be resolved after several more emails to HP Tech Support. I was finally instructed to do a full system recovery with Recovery discs. I went thru all 8 discs, a prompt then came up instructing me to insert the supplemental disc in the "top" CD/DVD drive. #1: I didn't get a supplemental disc with the recovery discs. #2: The top drive went bad last year and I replaced it with an external CD/DVD player/burner and disabled installed CD/DVD "top" burner. Now HP is telling me that I will have to replace the "top" CD/DVD in order to do the system recovery. Have any of you knowledgable folks here on the Computer Help Forum heard of this and do I have any options?

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Comments (6)

ravencajun Zone 8b TX
17 years ago
one option would be to purchase a copy of windows xp or vista and just reformat the pc and install the operating system from the purchased disc. It is more difficult to find xp now since MS is no longer selling it but you can still find them at various places, also if you took it to a repair shop that does installs they can do an install for you also.

I would question them as to what exactly this supplemental disc is and why you can not simply reformat the pc with recovery disc and one cd drive, having to have both is ridiculous. I have owned many HP computers and all came with either a recovery partition or discs and none required 2 cd drives. I would certainly question why I did not receive the supplemental disc if it was supposed to come with the model pc you have.
mare_wbpa
Original Author
17 years ago
What I understood that they were saying, isn't that I needed the 2 drives but I needed the "top" drive specifically. I emailed them again(about the 15th time)and now they are telling me that the CD/DVD ROM that is left installed will do the recovery if I have the supplemental disc. My understanding now is that if the "top" drive was still working I wouldn't need the supplemental disc. I hope that they're right. The supplemental disc is not sold separately, I'll have to pay $16 for the set. That's not a lot of money if it works but a big waste if it doesnt.
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fredferrell
17 years ago
Mare,

Did you unplug the bad drive inside the computer?
mare_wbpa
Original Author
17 years ago
I didn't want to go messing around with the internals, that's why I got the external drive. I did unclick it from wherever you have to go to disable it. It was a while ago, so I'm not sure, might have been device mgr.
fredferrell
17 years ago
This is going to be an interesting issue. Here's why. You are going to have to unplug the old drive from the inside because the bios is going to see that it is there when you are reloading Windows. It doesn't look at the current install that you have.

First you need to unplug the old internal CDROM.
Second, start up the computer and go into the "Setup" menu, with the external drive plugged in. As soon as you start the computer, there should be some Compaq screen that pops up and tells you to push F10 or something like that to get into the setup screens or what some call the "Bios." The bios is software that runs on your motherboard and allows access to different startup and hardware aspects in your system. You need to go under the startup sequence menu and look to see if the external drive is recognized. If it is you can load Windows from that drive. If not, let me know the exact make and model of the external drive and I can see what your options are.
mare_wbpa
Original Author
17 years ago
Fred,
Will I still nee,d the supplemental discs if I do what you reccommended or just the original set of 8 recovery discs I have.

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