# Banging head against wall!



## Aquarian (Apr 24, 2005)

i have hp pavilion 7845 and had formated hard rive tried reinstalling and i tried f disk its says can't find hard drive please help


----------



## seahawk83 (Feb 5, 2008)

if your drive is formatted already, what type of error are you getting when you try install an operating system


----------



## Aquarian (Apr 24, 2005)

Well when i try to boot with my windows cd it says recover aborted with blue screen and if i take the cd out it say can't find system also when the recover screen comes up it say can't find a.lst ,b.lst,c.lst,cab,attrib.data


----------



## blues_harp28 (Jan 9, 2005)

Hi try Boot from the startup floppy disk.
Select to start Without Cd-Rom support.
At the prompt, type 
FDISK
[If you click on 4 you can check if any partitions already exist.]
Delete existing Partitions.
Create Primary DOS Partition
Reboot with Floppy disk still in the drive.
Type.
FORMAT C:
follow the instructions.
When format is done press Ctrl-Alt-Delete and reboot.
Then use your ME install Cd.


----------



## Blue Zee (May 18, 2007)

blues_harp28 said:


> ...
> Then use your ME install Cd.


I fear he may have a Recovery CD rather than Windows ME.

If the HDD was fdisked and formatted the Recovery CD will not work.

On the other hand it may simply (ouch...) be a failing HDD.

Zee


----------



## blues_harp28 (Jan 9, 2005)

Blue Zee said:


> I fear he may have a Recovery CD rather than Windows ME.
> 
> If the HDD was fdisked and formatted the Recovery CD will not work.
> 
> ...


Good point..well spotted.


----------



## flavallee (May 12, 2002)

The *HP Pavilion 7845* is a 7 year old model, so a failing hard drive is a good possibility. 

If you're wiping out the hard drive and doing a fresh install of Windows 98SE or Windows ME, you run *fdisk*, reboot, run *format c:*, reboot again, then install the operating system with the proper DOS commands.

You need a fully-bootable startup floppy disk and a full version CD of Windows 98SE or Windows ME - not a recovery CD. If you have a Windows 95 CD lying around, you can use an upgrade version CD.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------


----------



## Aquarian (Apr 24, 2005)

Thanks for hanging in there with me. Yes, we have the ME restore cds that came with the machine. We have it reinstalled but when getting to the screen to accept the licience agreement the graphics are wrong and the box is covered. So, problem is, we installed a nvidea graphics card and the driver isn't there, I guess. I downloaded the driver on CD, went into safe mode to try and install this from the cd drive but can't access it. I can't find the original graphics card that came with the machine. Sooooo

Does anyone have the driver for graphics card nvida model NV19PL REV1.0 ? If someone could paste the contents of the file here then maybe I could create a file in the cab????? I'm not sure what to name it though, or if this is possible. Perhaps I'll put this request into the hardware forum too.


----------



## Blue Zee (May 18, 2007)

The restore CDs may not fully restore if you changed graphics card.

Nvidia drivers:

http://www.nvidia.com/object/win9x_81.98.html

Good luck.

Zee


----------



## Aquarian (Apr 24, 2005)

That's impossible since I can't get the computer online. Can't I create the file myself with the contents typed in? I saw on another forum where someone had their driver file there to show what needed to be in the file in order for two monitors to be used. They were using linux though.


----------



## Blue Zee (May 18, 2007)

I would suggest restoring using the original video card (onboard?) and reinstall the Nvidia video card after restoring Windows.

Zee


----------



## flavallee (May 12, 2002)

Aquarian:

The recovery/restore CD is created by the manufacturer when the computer is built.  When you subsequently replace internal hardware components(hard drive, video card, sound card, etc.) and then try to run the CD, it doesn't work because it doesn't "see" the same hardware components that it came with. 

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------


----------



## Aquarian (Apr 24, 2005)

Thanks both of you. We've recovered before though. Anyway, we took out the nvida leaving just the onboard graphics card. Silly me, I've been looking all over for it and it was inside the tower all along. But now it acts as if there is no OS at all so back to square one.


----------

