I had a half-brained idea to switch the bios video back to onboard
instead of pci, thinking the restore might work, major error.  Now I
can't view anything, since the onboard video is dead.   Is there any way
to access the bios without a monitor to reset this?   I removed the
network pci card, disconnected the hard drive, printer and cd, then
tried swapping the pci video card into another slot.  There is no agp
slot.  I also reset the cmos by switching the jumper pins and powering
on, powered down and switched cmos jumper back.  Still no video.  There
is no floppy drive installed.  A friend suggested that the partition D
software got corrupted over the 3 year life of the pc, and that I could
try an os install from cd to resolve my initial problem (below).   I
only made my backup copies of the recovery partition last week, so they
might not work either.   Reinstalling windows xp is issue #2 now..

Paul Hachmeyer wrote:

> I just ran a destructive restore using the delivered process on a 
> Compaq pc with win xp home sp2.  Partition D restore programs and 
> files were used to reformat and restore all delivered software to 
> drive C, effectively giving a clean out-of-box pc, albeit about 3 
> years old.
> When the restore finished, it asks if I want to start windows, I click 
> yes, it reboots, flashes a screen to wait while windows sets up, then 
> the xp screens appear and the screen goes to a blank blue/gray, 
> frozen. Reboot into safe mode, then I get a message - The system is 
> not fully installed, please run setup again.  I repeat the process, 
> same error.
> The only changes to the delivered pc was memory increased from 512 to 
> 2 gb and a motherboard problem with video resulted in adding a pci 
> video card for video.  The bios settings point the video to pci, not 
> onboard video and the flat panel still gets a signal.   No drivers 
> have been installed for the flat panel, unless xp did it by itself, 
> but it still displays everything until it freezes.  Ran similar 
> process 4 or 5 months ago on an HP of similar vintage, no problems, 
> only changes on the other pc were additional memory and an added dvd 
> reader.
> Where do I go from here?
> .
> Paul Hachmeyer
>

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