I just bought a HP Pavailion a350y 512 ddr3200 (off hpshopping.com) and i plugged it in and the setup had an error, it told me to restart. I did then ran setup again, same error. Hp doesnt ship its PC's with recovery CD's because its to expensive, you first have to run this setup then brun your own CD's. I called HP, he says the copy on my harddrive is corrupt. (i agree) He sent me the original recovery cds. I run the format full recovery, and it has error at the end, then reboot and it says ntdlr missing and I can't boot. What do you think it is, and how can I fix it. Maybe there is someway to format and create a partition then use recovery CD's, as I dont think the recovery performs a format, only deletes the partition table. Also I need to do this maintaing a NTFS so i can install the XP recovery. Please help!

You could do it this way. http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;320397 Or you could use a windows 98 bootdisk and use fdisk to delete and create the partition and format the drive to a FAT 32 file system. Then install the windows XP O.S. and once it is installed and up and running you right click on My Computer, Manage, Disk Management, the highlight the partition and convert the driver to the NTFS format just as if you were flipping a switch. This is probably the easiest and most straight forward solution for you. Good Luck.

Umm...no need to go for Windows 98 boot disk...try this link: http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?displaylang=en&FamilyID=E8FE6868-6E4F-471C-B455-BD5AFEE126D8 Hope, it'll solve the problem.

Afternoon, If I were you, I would call HP back and tell them you want a computer that works. They should send you another one. Over the last 4 years, having a few problems with HP computers, they have worked hard to satisfy me as one of their customers. They should also honor their warranty!!! If after 3 tries to correct the problem, they will escelate your problem and correct it, sometimes upgrading you free of charge. HP sent me out a computer and it would not boot. I called them and in 2 days I had another computer delivered to my door. Call them back and stand by your guns. Just my 2 cents, XDon

Hello. I owned a hp and let me tell you it went dead within the first six months. Hp would not help and the warrenty I had on it was a complete joke to them. I will never buy a hewlette packard again. The dvd drive was almost completely out of the system and failed to work within three days and the system itself continually crashed all the time. They wouldn't even recognize the warrenty on it or the extended warrenty. I called and asked for help and they wouldn't help me that way. Just stay away from them. The best thing you can do is just build your own computer. I did. S&A COMPUTERS