Greetings, I recently gave my 17yr.son my HP 6460 to use. I told him to run the "Recovery" disk to clean up the HD and such. Instead he had friend try to "Reformat" the HD. Now all we get is Video and the A:/ prompt when a floppy is installed. I've tried the R-disk as well as my copy of Windows 98 with Boot Disk, but system won't recognize the fact there's a CD-Rom available. I've also tried installing a Generic CD-Rom drivers floppy I have, but to no avail. I've gone in a reset the BIOS to "Defaults", but this hasn't helped. At one point I did get the C:/ prompt and tried every letter I could think of to get to the CD-Rom, but nothing worked. Bios seems to be set at (1) removable disk (2)HD, etc.,etc. It doesn't refer to an A drive, just the removable disk. Any ideas and help here, as how to go about getting this sucker up and running again, will be GREATLY appreciated!! Totally DUMBFOUNDED- Leroy51

Is the 'Recovery Disk' just a CD or a CD and a floppy? If it is just a CD then it is probably a bootable CD and all you need to do is change the setting in your bios for boot order. You want to make the CDROM the first boot device, followed by the hard drive. If all else fails, call HP, their tech support is supposed to be good.

------------------
Will Rickards ~ wrickard@home.com
http://www.willrickards.net

I'm not a geekess, yet anyway, but this same problem just happened to me last night, except I was reformatting and re-installing win95. Nothing would work, not the cd-rom install disk, the MS cd-rom startup..neither would let me access the cd-rom. I searched for help and found a post from ZDnet ..I know you are using win98, but you might find something to help you out.



hope this helps..

Greetings Will, Thanks alot for replying and for the info. The "Recovery" disk is just that, a CD-no "floppy". I did as you suggested, but with no luck. In BIOS I set (1)CD-Rom, (2)HD, (3)Remvable disk, (4)Network Boot ( don't know what this is??). I saved changes to CMOS and did a Save Changes and Exit.On reboot I get the VGA BIOS, Copyright, 3dx interactive, Vid. Mem. screen, then the "Invalid system disk" message. For some reason this sucker just doesn't seem to want to recognize the fact that it has a CD-Rom. When I use the Window 98 boot disk w/o CD support I get a message saying computer has a disk larger than 512MB and by saying "YES" to changing this it allows for a 2GB disk and FAT32. When I get the options for changing Partitons and such I check Active Partion and it says current fixed drive disk 1, Part. C:, Status A, Type PRI DOS, Label IS A, MBytes 9177, System FAT32 and only startable partition on Drive 1 is active. When I try the C:/ format /s, I get a message saying that a reguired parameter is missing. I hope some of this might help give you an idea as to what maybe going wrong here and why I can't seem to get the CD-Rom running. Once again, ANY and ALL help here will be GREATLY appreciated. I've had some occassions to use HPs' Tech Support, but typically when they know you've installed anything new to the system, they don't want to mess with it or want to charge you an "ARM" and a "LEG" for their advice. I did go through this once with them with BAD results. So, as I've mentioned, any further help you could be here will be GREATLY appreciated!! Leroy51

Have you tried a windows 98 cd with cd rom support? That is what I like to use. Also, HP's come with 2 recovery disks, one is application recover, one is system recovey. I have an HP, that is what mine has, and every HP I have seen has. not unless it extremely old HP or something.

In bios, set boot order back to floppy-HD-CD ROM.

boot with windows 98 startup cd, format c: drive again. If it won't let you, run fdisk, and delete all partitions, and then recrete them, reboot with that startup disk, and then reformat your partition(s). Now, the winders startup with cd rom support option should load your cd rom as your e: drive, unless you have multiple partitions, then it will bump back one letter for each additional partition you have. (i.e. if you have 2 partitions, it is the f: drive, etc...)

From that E: drive, should be a setup program in there, not 100 percent certian, but if you do a "dir" you should see what is on there, and pick one that is close. I will go home tonight and check out my recovery cd.

If this is older computer, the recovery disk might have been looking for file on the hard drive to run. I have an old acer recovery disk (it is recovery for win 3.1) that won't run on the system because I clean formatted it, it gives error message telling me it will not work cause the computer is not proper one.

Anyway, let me know how this works, and if it doesn't, put up another post, and I will try to come up with something else, or someone else might have an idea.

------------------
Joe Redd
MCP

You should not need to format the HD, that HP rescue disk really ought to take care of it.

But.
Your format statement is not correct.

try format c: /s

you will need to do this from the A: prompt, after booting with a floppy that has the format program on it.

The command you typed will look on the C dirve to find the format progarm. Since your HD has been erased it cannot have it there. Then the forward slash seperates the command parameters from the command.

Good luck

Greetings to You ALL, And THANKS for all the help. Unfortunately though, I've tried all of the above and system still will not recognize the CD-Rom! Becca, I went to ZDnet, but couldn't find a related issue. Was there a specific topic you looked under? I've run through several combinations of all kinds of different things, to get it to install Windows, but nothing seems to work, due to the CD-Rom issue. It takes the boot disk O.K., but won't go any further with CD-Rom support. Keeps saying it can't read drive E:. I've tried every other letter I can think of, but it says "Invalid". I'm wondering if the message about required parameter missing, on format of HD might have something to do with it. As in not enough room to load all it needs. I've tried to "Format" my C drive on a "floppy" on this computer, to load on the HP, but it says Windows is using it so it won't let me make a copy. Any further suggestions, help, ideas and such will still be GREATLY appreciated!! Totally lost as to what to try next. Hope someone out there has a "Do-able" idea. Again, THANKS for all your help!! Leroy51

you will need the floppy start up. if you'd like i can send it to you by email. just let me know. it's 1.14mb and you will need to copy it onto another floppy.

[This message has been edited by texian (edited 09-22-2000).]

Been watching this one and only thing I can think of might be a long shot. If the error mesage you're getting says it cannot read the drive, this makes me think the disk is not spinning correctly, so naturally the machine can't read it.

Open the CD ROM, look for the drive hubs. They will usually be black rubber hubs, round, one on top and one on bottom where the disk sits when inserted. Clean them with Q-tips and rubbing alcohol. Let it sit and dry with the cover on for about an hour in case any alcohol dripped inside the circuitry, and reinstall, try again. Don't touch the laser lens! One scratch and you'll be buying a new drive.


When the drive hubs get dirty, you get the same basic problem as with a dirty mouse ball and rollers. The hub can't spin the disk, which must be spinning for the machine to read it, thus, a "cannot read from specified device" message. Clean the hubs and it can spin again, and should work. Cost me a new CD ROM to learn about that one, found out later, cleaned it, and it's still working in my neice's machine 3 years later.

Clean a mouse the same way, and shut down the computer first. When the ball and rollers get dirty, the ball can't turn the rollers, which makes your mouse pointer hard to move. Q-tips and alcohol usually make it work like new.


------------------
If you had everything...Where would you put it?

Computer Information Links (http://www.geocities.com/paleopete/)

Hello Everyone! Just stumbled onto this board and it's great!

Leroy51: Have you tried HP's website for info? It's free! http://www.PCGuide.com/ubb/smile.gif

Here's the page dedicated to your model 6460: http://support.hp.com/cds/showpage/id/15724633.htm

Also, check out this page: http://www.hp.com/cposupport/personal_computing/support_doc/bph01323.html#P22_2825

Sure hope you can find something helpful there. Good Luck!

Kim