Problems with recovery disks

[amishcow]

My HP Pavilion has Windows XP on it. It has been going very slow lately, even though it has lots of memory left. I couldn't get on the internet or anything because it was so slow, so I decided to reinstall Windows. I had to order the recovery disks and when they came I used them and reinstalled and it worked fine. That was in June. Now it is doing the same thing so I am reinstalling again. This time, I put in disks 1-5 and it works fine. When it says insert disk 6, I do. But for some reason it doesn't accept it. It will open the CD tray back up and say This is not the right CD. Please incert HP system recovery disk 6 now. How do I fix this?

[Paul Komski]

Try cleaning the disk or get another replacement.

If you get it running again consider creating your own image file on a partition on the hard drive for your own "quick restores" and keep the CD set in a safe place.

[amishcow]

Ok, I ordered new recovery disks and they came today. But when I put the first one in, it says "These recovery cds do not support this HP pc model." I put in all the right information when I was ordering them and the disks have all the same information on them except they are different colors and different copyright years.

[mjc]

Have you ever upgraded the BIOS on this machine?

[amishcow]

I don't think so? What are they?

[Gecko 1123]

The BIOS is the system that controls the hardware of the pc, and tells it what to do by translating the commands from the operating system to the hardware, and vice versa. It stands for Basic Input Output System. You can upgrade it by "flashing" the BIOS, but its pretty dangerous. If you screw it up, your PC might be bricked. There's some way to fix a messed up BIOS flash, but you'd need to do some hot-swapping with the exact same kind of BIOS chip.

[amishcow]

No I never upgraded them.

[Gecko 1123]

Is this computer under warranty? If it is, its probably best to replace it. If it is under warranty, flashing the BIOS will usually (if not always) void your warranty. If the warranty is expired, it might be time to just get a new one, unless you really want that PC.

[amishcow]

No, its not under warranty. I've been thinking about getting a new one for a while so I probably will because of this. Thanks for your help!

[mjc]

OK...

One of the things that most major manufacturers do to ensure the copy of Windows that comes preloaded on a machine stays on that machine is to tie the install (even more than MS) to something specific about that machine. Many of them use an ID string in the BIOS to do this. If the BIOS has been updated, especially if it wasn't one from the manufacturer, then the restore disks won't work.

So, amishcow, if you haven't updated the BIOS, then that isn't the problem with your restore set.

You will need to get back in touch with HP and explain to them that the set they sent you is not working...

Often times with things like restore disks, there isn't much that anyone other than the manufacturer can do about them.