duh I formatted the HD

got a good one for you guys....I have a HP Pavilion 531w....the hard drive has been formatted but the hidden partition still exists...we do not have any way to get the programs or the original operating system off of it because I cannot figure how to get to the hidden partition to reload everything..any sugestions?

 

You have to repartition to delete partitions. Format only applies to a volume on a partition.

It goes like this:
Physical disk is divided into Partitions. Each Partition contains one or more Volumes. [On an Windows-like system, each Volume is assigned a drive letter, but some systems don't use them. Windows will not recognise most Volumes that don't have drive letters.] Each Volume is formatted in a particular File System (FAT32 or NTFS for Windows systems).

[Note also that MS will use "partition" and "volume" interchangably, even though they can be quite different.]

Partition information on a disk is store in the Partition Table, which is contained in sector 0 of the disk (the first sector). If you erase that sector, the disk appears to be blank (partitions aren't listed, so they can't be mounted; volumes on those partititons then can't be mounted). The Windows installer will treat the disk as though it were fresh from the factory.

The easiest thing to do is to get a disk wiping utility like DBAN and erasing the first few sectors of the disk (I believe DBAN has an option just to do that).

 

Are you talking about the hidden recovery partition? Do you want to recover the operating system or do you just want to wipe the hard drive and start again?

To access the recovery partition press F10 repeatedly during booting up.

See this:

http://h10025.www1.hp.com/ewfrf/wc/document?lc=en&cc=us&lang=en&dlc=en&product=77623&docname=bph07145

 

Hm, yeah. I didn't read it that way at first, but now that you mention it, it isn't clear what you want to do.

 

yes I want to access all the info on the hidden so I can have my system back....I will try the f10 and others that you guys have advised me on....will let ya know...thanks