My buddy reformatted his hard drive by accident. How can I help him?

He said he got a virus and in his panic to try to get the virus off his computer he reformatted his hard drive. Now when he turns it on it says to insert a boot disk.

Basically, he just wants to be able to use his computer again. He doesn't necessarily care about getting any files from it, if it's even possible.

He doesn't have any recovery disks or anything that came with the computer. What can I do to help him? Will he need to get another OS and install it?

EDIT: The computer actually says to install an new OS on it.

 

Basically what he has done is wipe out his OS.

If you give us some info we will try to help.
Make and model of the PC/Laptop
What was the original operating system XP/VISTA/W7/W8

 

HP
HP ProBook 4430s

Windows XP

Tell me if I need to post anything else. I have system info screen up right now.

 

I have to leave for about 1 hour but i will get back as soon as possible.

 

Alright, thanks for the speedy reply. I have to leave in a little bit, too, so that's fine. I'll be back around 12:30 pm eastern time. I'm going to be checking this thread steadily until about 10 am so if anyone else can help me before then that's cool.

 

OK i'm back

Let's try recovery.

Start the laptop and start to tap f8 immediately it should bring up a screen with options select "repair your computer" and follow the onscreen instructions.

Hopefully this will give a restore to factory settings.

If this does not work then do the same thing only this time press f11 and follow the onscreen instructions.

 

Tapping f8 brings me to a System Diagnostics screen with the options:

• f1 System Information
• f2 Start-up Test
• f3 Run-in Test
• f4 Hard Disk Test

Or I can hit ESC to exit Which brings me yo a screen that says:

"BootDevice Not Found

Please install an operating system on your hard disk.

Hard Disk - (3F0}

F2 System Diagnostics

For more info, please visit ..."

f11 does nothing and just eventually that same text as above comes up.

 

I had hoped that the recovery partition had not been formatted but it looks as though we are out of luck.

If you turn the laptop over you should see a COA (certificate of authenticity) it has 25 digits in blocks of 5 (see photo) and i would assume it will also say
Windows XP home
OEM software

If it does you will need to contact HP and explain the problem, you will also need to have the serial number of the laptop which is also on the underside or in some cases you need to pull the battery to find it.

You could search the web for an OEM copy but it must be an HP OEM of the same version that is printed on the COA or the key will not work,I have spent a lot of time trying to find a free copy for you but the only ones i have found are from torrent sites and here at MGs we do not give out anything other that legal addresses.

I am sorry that we were not successful with the recovery but tell your freind when the PC is back up and running to make a backup so they do not end up in this situation again.