Hello,

I am having trouble formatting my hard drive. I am using xp pro on a hp d330 2.4ghz. I believe some essential windows files got deleted using a spyware program. Now o/s is nonfunctional. I try to boot from cd (win xp) to format hd and reinstall fresh copy of o/s but it gets stuck on the "searching for an existing copy of windows" step. I know the problem is related to the hard drive because I tried formatting this hd in another computer and got the same error message. Unfortunately I don't have the recovery cd to help me. I also tried booting with the A: drive and using format c: but that didn't work either. Anybody out there have any hints or suggestions?

Kind Regards,

Philip Moogk

Most HPs and Compaqs come with a recovery partition. This can be accessed by using the F10 key when the HP bios splash screen is shown on the monitor.

hope this helps.

Hello,

Could you guide me through this a bit. I pressed f10..got to the hp setup utility page. Where do I go from here to do the recovery partition? I have four headings file...storage....security....advanced....which one do I use?

Kind Regards,

Philip

Is this a laptop?

The F10 key has taken you into the bios, try the F11 key.

This computer is a desktop...F11 doesn't do anything....I called hp and ordered the restore cd and the o/s cd....I hope that will work....thanks for your suggestions.