# Used WRONG Recovery CD



## JaxLady (Sep 14, 2005)

I please need some help. I did a stupid thing and used the wrong Recovery CDs.

My dad gave me his old HP Pavilion 8566C that came with Windows 98 SE. It has an Intel Pentium III w/ 500mhz, 128 RAM, and I do not know the size of the HD  I think 17 GB. (I wanted this computer to use as back up if anything ever went wrong with my own eMachines T2080 XP Home desktop.)

My dad could not find the Recovery CDs for the HP, and I wanted this computer to start fresh after I backed up and saved all of his personal files on his new computer. So, I did something ingenious. (Stated with sarcasm.) I used my Recovery CD from my eMachines T2080 with XP Home. It seemed to Recover fine, and went through the process, but now I get a message apologizing the Windows did not start successfully and asks if would I like to start in Safe Mode, Start Windows Normally, etc. When I select any of the options, nothing happens, and I get a blank screen. 

My dad finally found the Recovery CDs that came with his HP, so I tried to use them. When I insert the disc, it states that a hard drive could not be found, and asks if I want to complete FDisk. I shut down and removed this disc, and restarted. I got the message again apologizing the Windows did not start successfully and asks if would I like to start in Safe Mode, Start Windows Normally, etc.

Any assistance would be appreciated for my getting back to the original Windows 98 or somehow being able to use this install of XP.

On a side note, I have an old copy of Windows 98 upgrade that I bought a long time ago, if anyone thinks that will help in someway.


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## win2kpro (Jul 19, 2005)

Just my opinion but I think your best option for the HP is to go to the drive manufacturers website and download a "zero fill" utility (may be called a Low Level Format Utility) and zero out the HP hard drive.

Before you "zero fill" the hard drive, go into BIOS and set the boot sequence to 1st floppy drive, 2nd CD ROM and 3rd hard drive.

After you "zero fill" the hard drive remove the media you used, insert the Win98 recovery disk and reboot. At this point the computer should boot from the Win98 CD. When Windows finds the wiped hard drive it will tell you it is "new-unformatted". Just follow the on screen instructions and format the drive for FAT32. After Windows formats the drive it will start the Win98 installation, just follow the on screen prompts until 98 is installed. During the installation is you get a prompt that says something to the effect of "press enter to boot from the CD, DON'T press enter, just wait a few seconds and it should boot from the hard drive.

You will not be able to put XP on that computer from an eMACHINES recovery disk Microsoft will catch it during the "WAP"
(Windows Activation Process) you can't run the same XP program on 2 computers. If you want to run XP on the HP machine you would need to buy another copy of XP.

Zeroing the hard drive takes a little longer but you will get a nice clean installation of Win98.

If you encounter any problems booting from the Win98 CD you can make a set of boot "floppies" for Win98, boot from the floppies then install Win98 from the CD.


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