Al,

   If you boot with the recovery CD in the CD-ROM drive, it may boot to the
CD and instructions for performing the recovery should appear.  Most
recovery CD's are set up in this manner.
   If it doesn't boot to the CD, possibly the BIOS is not set to check the
CD drive first.  I don't know what keys are used to enter an HP BIOS, but
two you did not mention are SHIFT-F1, F2, and F10.  If he has two CD drives,
such as a DVD and CD (R, RW, whatever), it won't boot to the DVD.
   Just a personal note: If it is brand new, he should be able to call HP
for support.  I usually resist working on brand new computers without
working with the warranty service provider.

Fred Nielson

-----Original Message-----
Sent: Sunday, December 23, 2001 12:48 AM
Subject: [PCSOFT] XP Crash and Burn

A friend's brand new HP system has crashed, there is NO boot disk, and I
know nothing about Windows XP. He says he had just turned his Athlon 1.3ghz
on, and after bootup Windows update downloaded something, then restarted his
pc. I can restart in safe mode and the other options, but no cursor is
available - I'm stuck. All I have to work with is his HP recovery disk, but
the cd drive doesn't respond.

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