Problem with Recovery disk????

My wife & I have been having so many problems with our PC that we decided to restore it to the original factory settings. Our 900 mhz AMD Athlon Compaq Presario [running WinMe] came with a "Recovery Disk" to enable this option but we cannot get it to run.
Rebooting the PC with this disk in the drive brings up a DOS looking screen that offers 5 choices & asks you to pick the # option that you want, so we do. Then we get a warning telling us that everything on the hard drive will be deleted & so on. The next screen simply says "Working..." & does not show any signs of progress. We called Compaq to ask how long this process should normally take & they said roughly 2 hours.
Well we waited above & beyond more than once & got nowhere. Calling Compaq is a real hassle because usually you have to literally wait for hours - no kidding - to get thru to a tech. That's why I thought of coming here to ask your help. This place is & has been a real haven for us in the past helping us solve so many other PC problems. I say thanks to God for all of you in my prayers - again, no kidding.
Anyway, any response would be appreciated & thanks in advance!

 

Todd
any progress on the problem yet
I Personaly have no exp with the restore disks, least this will bump the thread up ,, have you looked here
http://h30132.www3.hp.com/servlet/ProcessRequest?RHIVEID=121&RPAGEID=0

Possible post a question there or here:
desktops and workstations
Good luck .let us know?

Lonny

 

Problem with Recovery disk

So far I'm getting nowhere but thanks for the links. Don't know which way to turn.......

 

I suspect that there might be a hardware problem.

If not, at least the HD may be messed up so the recovery can't take place properly, maybe at the partitioning and formatting level.

Compaq sometimes uses hidden partitions for storing a copy of the system. If you select an option that maybe not too evidently tries to do the recovery starting from this hidden partition, and it's not there or it's broken, who knows what may happen!

I suggest you let the CD start from a clean slate. Make sure the option you choose is FULL REFORMATTING of the WHOLE DISK, not just of the working partition(s).

Try that, and if it's still no go, I suggest you nuke all the partition information on the HD and let the recovery CD redo the whole HD from scratch up.

You may wipe partitions off by using a couple of possible programs. One, called FDISK, should be on your boot floppy.

Boot using the floppy.

Exit to DOS, type A:, enter.

Type FDISK, and carefully read menus and comments.

FDISK will not physically damage your HD, but can be used to raze its partitions to the ground. You have already given up on any content of your HD, so no harm done.

If you don't find it in the boot floppy of that PC, also the boot floppy from another Windows 95-98 PC might have it and should suffice to do the bombing.

If you only have a boot floppy without FDISK, I suggest you get from the internet a free small and good program called Ranish Partition Manager. You don't need to learn all the details (it's a complicated piece of sw) you need to use it just for its destructive power. Just read enough to be able to erase partitions!

Save it it on a floppy (not compressed!).

Boot the PC with a boot floppy, exit to DOS.

Type A: , enter.

Swap floppies.

Type PART, enter.

The program will show what it sees in the way of partitions. You will have the chance to see if there are any strange hidden partitions before nuking them all.

Fumble around until none is left standing, and save the result.

Now retry the recovery disk.

Good luck!