I did NOT recieve any recovery CD's with my pavilion 7955 (bad HP!) and now my MBR is corrupt because of the Stealth.B Boot Virus. I wiped the virus using Norton, but the F10 thing is gone. I cannot find FDISK to perform an MBR wipe nor can I manage to use System Commander 7 to try to boot the recovery partition. HP is being a pain, telling me to check the HDD for errors, turn on full memory check during POST, and half the tech guys/gals don't know/act like they don't know what an MBR is. HELP!!!!!!

When emailing me, remove the _nospam_ from the link above.

This recovery partition BS is a piece of mischief from HP (and others) that deserves a sound flogging for everyone who participated in its conception. In your place I'd become a royal pain in the you know what by demanding to talk to upper tier management support. Threaten to complain to the BBB etc. To me this practice is almost criminal because they do not disclose the exisftence of this recovery partition before you buy the machine. I don't know how anyone can overcome the disgust for these corporations long enough to fill out the credit card info.

Roger, i would very much like for you to post your full story about your dealings with HP. They claim this no recovery disk policy is to make it easy for you the consumer.

Call up and demand that a copy be sent to you. If your not under warranty who cares. These guys have to support this thing. They must send you a copy of the disks. What happenes in 4 years when they decide they wont help you?

If your warranty covers in home repair schedule a date. Let them spend some money and time on you instead of the otherway around.

Please join the build your own pc community. This will either force OEM's to build real pc's again or close the company doors.

Oh.. you can make a boot disk or download one. FDISK can be run from this disk.

Before giving instructions i wanted to ad that if you fdisk you might lose your recovery partition. I havent seen one of those machines so i really dont know.

You need access to a 98 or me pc.

Creating a Windows 9x Startup Disk:
1. Insert a blank 3.5 disk into your floppy drive.
2. Open Add/Remove Programs properties in Control Panel.
3. Click the Startup Disk tab, and then click Create Disk.
4. Follow the instructions on the screen.

Or Download one at www.bootdisk.com.

Deleting the non dos partition if it exists will remove xp. if xp is installed under fat then format c should get rid of it.

Roger, If I were you and want to get my machine up and running, especially if its out of warranty, I would call HP and get a copy of the recovery CDs. I believe its a 7 cd set and they will charge you about $10 for shipping and handling.

Keep the cds safe just in case you need them again. And while you are at it, tell them you will never buy another HP machine until they again ship the units with recovery software. I just bought a third machine here. Two are HP Pavilions which run very well and came with win me preloaded and recovery software. But, while researching the third purchase I didn't even consider HP because of the recovery cd problem. I bought a Dell and it came with recovery software.

Let them know and good luck!

Ken stated the best fact, learn about what your buying before you start whining, HP pavilions are beginner pc users who just want the computer for what it is not to multi-boot and run everything you can find. Build a custom built if you want to be a custom user.