HP Pavilion 734n Recovery not working

SteveMon · June 28th, 2004, 09:30 PM

All,

I Have a HP Pavilion 734n. I also have the recovery cd's, which HP sent to me today.
Here's the deal. I can start the recovery from the first Recovery CD....the pc boots up, I get a message to type R' to start the recovery. The next set of text statements flash accross the screen...I can select R for a non-destructive recovery and F for Full. No matter which letter I select, I get the white bar on the bottom of the screen stating the HP Recovery is loading...the bar turns all white, then...NOTHING!. The PC just hangs there with a black screen. I try it from the bios by hitting f10...same thing. Get the white bar and HP Recovery is starting, then NOTHING...black screen.
This computer had Windows XP - Home installed on it. The registry somehow became corrupt and windows was caught in a boot loop. I orderd the Recovery CDs. Been on the phone with HP all day. Finally, after trying countless things..HP Support out and out dumped me by stating the Pavilion was a month out of warrenty. That was that.
So, I'm not sure what else to do. I can install Windows XP Pro on it, however, all of the programs that came on the pc are on those recovery disks. The XP Pro is a retail CD I had laying around my office. To get that to finally install I had to F5 at "Setup is checking your system" and select "Regular PC" or the XP install kept hanging at "Windows startup is now starting".. you know, right before the 3 options (install, recover, or exit) come up.

I Have tried Fdisking, fdisk /MBR, re-formating....you name it. I
have also removed all periphs....just have 1 cd-rw, 1 dvd, 1 HD, and a video card. Have disabled everything like USB, Audio, lan, serial ports, etc that are on the motherboard. Only expansion card is the video card.
I have NO idea what else to try.
Any suggestions???

Thanks very much...apologise about the long post...
SteveMon

jman01pa · June 28th, 2004, 09:55 PM

When you format, do you do a full format and are their any error meesages or does all format good?

SteveMon · June 28th, 2004, 10:01 PM

It's all good....everything appears to run as normal.
I can install ME...I can install XP - Pro, although it takes a little work.
The hard drive reports no errors.....
For the life of me, that damm Recovery Program is just not working and HP refuses to help. It's really amazing to me......I gave them almost 50 bucks for the recovery cds....no help..nothing...it's out of warrenty. Christ!
I've checked on their site about blank screens in recovery but nothing. It's gotta be some kind of bug and they just won't admit to it.

SteveMon

John Prophet · June 28th, 2004, 10:10 PM

I think one is always better to just buy a copy of Windows Xp and start with a fresh install....of course the only problem is that you dont get whatever free software came on the HP..but you also dont get all the free unwanted junk software etc....

wju425 · June 29th, 2004, 12:09 PM

I just got through working on a pavilion 545x and it was a pain in the ass at the begining. I don't know if your is the same way but here's what I found out. HP has a hidden partion on drive C which is non dos and rest of the drive is ntfs. The computer had a bad virus in it and I can't use the recovery console in win xp. This computer doesn't come with a recovery disk because it's in the hidden partition. So ok, I'll just format the damn thing and reinstall win xp. All it did was format the hidden partition which is only 738 mbs and there's no way I can install win xp. I got out my trusty win98 boot disk and fdisked it. It is now one partition with fat 32 and formatted. Installed win xp and got on the net for sound drivers and all ready to go! It's no longer an HP but a clone like ours. Hope that helps friend.

\o/ Billy