I like using the hard drive manufacture's utility disk when starting over
with reinstalling the operating system.  You can use the utilities to check
the integrity of the drive itself, first; then, you can use the function
that writes zeros to the disk, essentially returning it to the condition it
was in before it left the factory.  Check to see who made your drive, and
visit their web site to download these utlities and make a bootable diskette
with them.

Assuming that the hard drive utlities certified the drive as still ok and
you successfully zeroed it out, then I would move on to creating a partion
with fdisk, using either your windows start up disk or by booting off of the
HP recovery CD.  Once the partition is created, you should be able to format
it by booting from the recovery CD.

Anyway, that is what I gathered from looking at HP's online support
document, "HP Pavilion Desktop PCs - Recovering the System after the Hard
Drive is Replaced".  The link is given below, but since it is so long you
will probably need to cut and paste the whole thing into your brower's
address window.

http://h20015.www2.hp.com/en/document.jhtml;jsessionid=JBQL0T0JCO5PHQEXGRMEOSQ?reg=na&cc=us&docName=bph05579&lc=en&

HTH

John

----- Original Message -----
From: "Connie Clifton" <[log in to unmask]>
To: <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: Tuesday, August 26, 2003 2:33 PM
Subject: [PCBUILD] Windows ME that still won't


> Update on my prior posting.  (Trying to get a HP Pavillion to run the
> recovery program.)I appreciate your help although I must have done
something wrong
> cause now its really not co-operating.
>   I used fdisk to delete the partion on the hard drive and create another
> one. First time I've ever done that so I have no idea what I did wrong if
> anything.  Now it has a partion on the drive with no volume lable ( blank)
and no
> operating system. If I get the fdisk to create a dos partition it gets to
the
> "verifing drive integrity" part and works up to anywhere from 10 to 30 to
about
> 50%, (once went to 100% ) and then drops back to 0 and starts over.  It
just
> runs and runs and runs.
>      If I get the recovery disk to run it says "invalid Media Type Reading
> Drive C" and I must exit.
>   Where do I go from here?

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