My computer will not boot up. when you power it up it shortly goes to a black screen reading "Windows did not boot properly because of new hardware or software installation. At the bottom of the screen it give you the option to start up regularly or in safe mode with a count down of 30 seconds then automaticly boots regularly. No matter what you do it will freeze up. It will not go past that screen. The hard drive is new and I was reloading HP recovery CDs. Thought the CD were bad, so they sent me some more. That still didn't work. Have you any thoughts. Thanks in advance for your help.

so the OS that won't boot up, is that the old one? or the new one from the recovery CDs? or neither? If the newly installed OS from the recovery CD will not boot into Windows then I would think that there is a possibility of a hardware configurational issue. How many HDs are currently in the machine when trying to boot, and have you ensured that the jumper settings are correct on all the HDs. If it's the OLD OS that won't boot up, then did you try booting into Safe Mode, or Last Known Good Configuration? anyway... need more details before I can be of any more help. Thanks.

The hard drive crashed and I put a new one in. I did forget to say that I also thought the new hard drive was bad so I replaced it, but still no luck. I think the jumpers are right. I followed the digram in the manual. It will not let you boot in safe mood, it freezes up. It will let me format the hard drive and it will also let me install all 7 disc. Its just when you have to restart the computer after the installation it will freeze up at that same black screen.

k, that makes more sense. Do you have any reason to suspect that other hardware could have failed as well, like a video card maybe? Was their a power surge or was the HD just old and exhausted. If you have no reason to suspect other hardware or drivers and think that it is just the Harddrive, then I would re-investigate the jumper configuration. Also is the new drive the ONLY drive in the system? or did you put the old drive back in as a secondary? I would remove all drives other than the new one your are installing until you get everything worked out. I had a Western Digital HD that gave me problems as well... would let me install every time and then just crash loading into Windows. Not sure why, but when I called tech support they said I had the jumper settings right, but they told me to remove the jumper completely. After that it installed perfectly fine and loaded into windows with no errors. This just to say that Windows can be very temporamental and even intermittent (not always consistent) when the jumpers are not set right on a hard drive. Hope that helps! - Michael

You might need to format the Slave Drive(I take it that is the setting you have for the second drive), and use the following command; Make sure you get to a Command Prompt before entering the command below, Delete *.* \s This will delete all data on a System Level. I have had the same problem and this has helped me out. Hope this helps Jack Thanks in Advance Jack

Jack, It would be simpler to just remove the 2nd drive and work with the one he is installing on. Less likely to have conflicts in HD configurations as well as it will prevent him from having to Delete any data that he may potentially need. I am sure that you or I would probably have the data we need already backed up, but I never assume that to be the case with other people posting here. The path of least effort and the one that will be most dependable is to only work with the 1 drive until he gets the issue resolved or verifies that the 2nd drive (if in the system) is the problem. Thanks.

All the above has been tried. I have just one hard drive and thats all I am plaining on having for right now. Have you any more suggestions?