Question about reformatting a HDD

S

Starguard

Limp Gawd
Joined
Jul 28, 2003
Messages
332
My sister has a HP Desktop that has crashed and is now showing the "blus screen of death". We believe that she may need to re-format her computer. Only problem is that she has somehow misplaced the reformat disk that came with it. My old eMachines ran Windows XP and I still have the reformat disk to it.

My Question is....

Will my eMachines reformat disk work on her HP HDD?

Please Advise!
 
that HP should have a recovery partion unless its really old. if it doesnt have a recovery partition then call or go to HP.com and just order the discs for like 10 bucks. the Emachines disc will not work in the HP comp. it will check something on the motherboard and stop because it will not be detected as and Emachine pc.
 
If the emachine disc is just Windows XP it would work but if it's an actual recovery disc then no it wouldn't because it's set up for that model you have.

I used a Dell XP disc for a few years since mine was damaged, it was just XP with dell branding on the CD label.
 
bigdogchris said:
If the emachine disc is just Windows XP it would work but if it's an actual recovery disc then no it wouldn't because it's set up for that model you have.

I used a Dell XP disc for a few years since mine was damaged, it was just XP with dell branding on the CD label.
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yeah the Emachine discs will be just a set of recovery discs. at least all the desktop Emachine desktops I have seen were. also what you said about the Dell disc didnt work for me the one time I tried it. I put a Dell XP disc in a non dell pc and it started the process and then gave me some message about it not being a Dell pc. I believe it checks something on the motherboard from what I was told.
 
It is possible to use an OEM XP CD (non-brand) and make a fresh install of XP. This would be an OEM disk bought from a store or etailer like newegg (or borrowed from a friend). You can download all the drivers from the manufacturer web site. This solution will exclude any pre-installed applications that came with your PC.

It is also possible to make an OEM CD. This is not everyone's cup of tea (some could find it to be very complicated).

It could make life easier if you can recover the XP key from the current installation, which is different from the key stuck on the desktop case.



Of course, the easiest solution is to find the recovery disks.
 
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