Hi everyone I am having serious problems with my HP Pavillion. I think it was infected with a virus or so, but anyway, last Friday I started the HP System Recovery, which basically reconfigures your pc but keeps all data (files, photos...). I had done that a few times in the past and it always worked. After the recovery, you can 'restart' the computer. In other words, Windows is restarted as well. This usually took the computer about two hours. But now, the black Windows screen with the Windows logo remains... nothing happens after 2 hours, after 3...4...5...6...7....hours. I let my pc turned on for more than a day... but still... nothing. The hourglass looks like frozen. So I turned my pc off and on again. Result after having it turned on again: a message appeared: "Windows setup was not completed". And then... the whole shebang restarts... A second and third 'system recovery' did not change anything. What can I do? All software was already installed on my PC when I bought it, so I have no Windows installation disks... Any help will be greatly appreciated Regards from Belgium P

Take the hard drive out, put it in a different pc as a slave, copy all of the files you want to keep to that pc. Then put the hard drive back in the pc it is in now and do a full recovery where it brings it back to the state where it was when you bought it from the store. Then you can transfer the files that you backed up, back to the original pc.

http://h10025.www1.hp.com/ewfrf/wc/... http://www.gennersales.co.uk/#Windo... I found this on another forum. "Boot into safe mode. Start >> Run >> type: msconfig >> go to the Startup tab >> click Disable All >> Reboot your system. If it boots fine, great! You know your issue is the result of one or more of the programs in that startup list. From this point, I would enable one by one to figure out which one causes issues. However, if the problem persists, it's most likely an operating system issue. In that case, and again I've never done this in safe mode: Insert your XP CD in the CD-ROM and boot into safe mode, Start >> Run >> type: sfc /scannow >> Reboot." This is assuming you can get into safe mode. You will probably need to borrow a windows disk to run system file checker. Before posting try google. Backup. Use anti virus software.

can you boot to safemode?? if there were virus, you should have rid those first, and turned off system restore to dump the virus from the backup files. do you have access to another computer? you might download a win98 bootdisk, and boot with it, and remove all partiitons, and reset the c:\ partition. if you not familiar with these types of actions, forget this post. you might buy a win xp on ebay and boot with it to do a system repair.

I started the HP System Recovery, which basically reconfigures your pc but keeps all data (files, photos...). I had done that a few times in the past and it always worked. There are two types of HP System Recovery - nondestructive & destructive. The non-destructive method simply invokes Windows System Restore. This method enable you to retain your data (depending on how you have configured Windows System Restore). The duration for this operation is usually shorter than the destructive method. On the other hand the destructive method literally reformat the HD. No data can be recovered. You must have been using the former method. i_XpUser

Hi guys Thanks for your posts. As I am not a computer geek at all... a few notes / questions 1. My main concern is data retrieval. So a destructive system recovery is not an option. I don't care about the f*cking machine, but about the data ;-) 2. 'Boot into safe mode'. Is that through F8? Because I pressed F8 at start-up and tried every single option: - Safe Mode - Safe Mode with Networking - Safe Mode with Command Prompt Result: not different from normal start-up. The black screen is there and remains there until that message 'setup was not complete' appears. 3. There is probably a virus involved. But, if I cannot get into my computer, is there a way of getting rid of it? 4. Booting into safe mode does not work. Will that be different if I insert an XP installation disk into my computer. I haven't got one, but I should be able to get one. But is this still an option? 5. If 4 is not an option, is the hard disk option (get it out, put it into another pc, copy all, then full recovery...) then my only option? I wouldn't know how to get it out properly, and I haven't got another pc (except for my professional laptop)... Lookting forward to some replies... Regards from Belgium Pieter