HD crashed no recovery disk Pavillion 8674D Help!

My 5-year old grandson has a Pavillion 8674D desktop and the HDD seems to have died. When we try to boot the system, it says to insert the boot disk. I ran the trial version of Active Boot Disk and the computer started, but it would not recognize the HDD. I took the HDD out and slaved it to my computer and my computer also could not locate the HDD, so I guess that it is toast.

I did not get a recovery disk when I bought the computer used and Dumb Grandpa forgot to create a recovery disk, so...

what do I do now? I went to the HP website and there does not appear to be a recovery disk that I can buy from them.

Thanks in advance,

Ken:

 

The discs are harder to find on the HP site than with other manufacturers. Like, major P.I.A. .

Look here (scroll down):

http://h10025.www1.hp.com/ewfrf/wc/document?docname=bph07143&lc=en&dlc=en&cc=us&product=61058#N75

:major

 

Thanks, I tried that sit and tried every oS, but the best I can find is for Windows 98 but it only includes BIOS and drivers, which I probably will need, but no recovery disk for this computer. Any other suggestions?

thanks again.

Ken

 

According to HP, the only OS supported on this computer is Windows 98SE. It shipped with only 128MB or ram. Is this the operating system you were using? I believe the only option would be to buy it on something like Ebay if you cannot get a hold of it somewhere else.

Edit: was your grandson surfing the internet with this?

 

What operating system were you running?

Just because they say it will only run W98SE, does not mean it can't run a different OS.

I had a Dell Latitude that Dell swore up and down, across five Sundays, that it would not run XP. I ran XP on it for three years, before it finally gave up the ghost.

This is a rather old PC. Have you considered an upgrade?

 

I have not replaced the HDD yet, but I inserted a Windows 95 OS disk since it is the only one that I have, besides a Windows 98 upgrade. (XP came loaded on all the other computers we have.) When I booted and I received the Boot Drive error message, I put the Windows 95 OS disk in the drive and hit enter and just got the error message again. Is this because it needs to see Window 98?

Thanks for your help.

 

What are using using as a boot disk? Windows 95 and 98 are NOT bootable CDs. You need a boot disk first then you can see the CD and install the OS.

 

OK, you got me, The guy from HP said to just put the full OS system disk in the computer and boot from that. I didn't think that made sense but,hey, if HP says that is how to do it, whom am I to argue?
What am I supposed to do? I have access to 4 other computers but the only the OS system disks I have are the two I mentioned. I have recovery CDs for the others, but they all say that they only work on that PC.
Thanks for any help.

 

Do you still have a working floppy drive and a blank floppy? You could try either the Win98 OEM or Custom floppy disk from here.

See if you can boot from the floppy and then see if you get get to the C: drive by typing C: at the A:> prompt. That should tell you if the PC will see the current HD.

 

You probably got someone young who never ran early versions of Windows so does not know the disks were not bootable.
I had a Pavilion 8650C with 98SE installed and I got some sort of floppy as well as a disk with it.

I suspect, I don't have the floppy that came with it but I'm pretty sure I have some boot floppies archived. Make that, I do have a Windows 98 Boot Disk. I used it on a micron notebook and the HP tower.
If you need one, yell.