Windows Error Code: 0xc000000f

BTW, don't worry. You can't hurt anything as long as you have an installation disk in your possession. It's the great equalizer. It has all the tools for recovery, and, as I mentioned, you also have the option to install over the top of Windows. This is like a glorified recovery partition in itself really. You have the ability with that to be able to reinstall and still recover files. And it won't mess with Recovery or other partitions too.

In this case you are just getting rid of the useless Windows 7 recovery partition. A Windows 10 one can be added later if you would like to do so. Best to get Windows installed and activated and then you can cross that bridge if you want to do so.

 

Hey, I really appreciate your help on all this. I play around with my computer all the time but I learn stuff the hard way most of the time. I have Linux and Windows 7 and I'm happy, never played around much with Win 10. Kinda lost with that version...thanks again!

BTW...83% done now

 

This is good news! When you boot into Windows (now I will cross my fingers ), go to Start menu->Right click on "This computer"->select "Manage"->select "Disk Management". This will give you a look at the partition structure of the drive. Prntscrn to grab a screen capture and then upload the pic. Hopefully, you will have just the System, the root (575 GB), and the HP Tools partitions. Just hoping really that the Windows 10 installation disk doesn't add another System partition when installing this way, although I don't think it will.

After this, go to Start and follow these instructions to check on activation:

https://www.thewindowsclub.com/windows-10-activation-status-change-product-key

Look to see that you have an internet connection. If not, it may be necessary to download the network driver directly from the manufacturer's website. A connection will be necessary for activating Windows.

 

Yeah, no problem. You are welcome. I learn the hard way too, but at least there is a good amount of help in videos these days. BTW, I have 6 Windows 7 PCs and 2 XP PCs. Looked at W10 but never like the OS.

I recently installed Manjaro in a dual boot. That was cool, but I couldn't get the internet working. Ended up deleting the partition once I read more about how much I might have to go through to get connected. I have to use wi-fi, and native Linux doesn't support the adapter I have so oh well.

I was thinking of SUSE when I install Linux again. Which distro of Linux are you using?

 

Good help you are getting from Atlbo but a general tip - you can always order tabular info in Explorer simply by clicking on a column heading.

 

I started out years ago with a version just called Red Hat. Lots of command line stuff, not much on the GUI side. I couldn't get my wife to use it because she's a point and click type so I changed over to a version called Mandrake. I liked it and ran that for many years until the box itself just wouldn't run and parts could no longer be found.

The box I got now was given to me by a friend of mine that used it for a business he had, a small Dell computer with a very small hard drive. I cleaned it up and installed Ubuntu on it but been having issues with the display. It seems the on board display is not very compatible and causes a reinstall periodically. Since I only use it to research online, I've gone with just keeping a live version in the CD player and running it off of that. If I get some time, I might find another distro for it. I only chose Ubuntu because it was small and multi-user, but now a distro that is just small will do since my wife has no problem with the default browser (Firefox) installed with most distros.

Problem is, it (Catana) wants me to go through a setup process and gets to a point where it wants me to sign in with a Microsoft account. I'm not sure if my friend had an account but I figured I would let him go through the setup process. I did reboot just to make sure it does boot up on it's own and starts the setup process over again. I'll try to get him to set it up while at work. That way, I can grab that stuff and post it here. Hopefully, he'll remember any usernames/passwords he might have used. But nevertheless, in the beginning of the setup process, I was able to get it to connect to my wifi and it did some updates. Just got hung up on the Microsoft account thing. It won't let me skip that!

 

Earthling said:

I didn't know that the setup window during installation would act like explorer, good info there Earthling, thanks!

 

OK, no problem. Probably a good time to break. I'll check back tomorrow when I get some time. Some of these wizards around her can help you with the W10 settings if your friend wants to disable the ever so lovely assistant Cortana or has any other requests. I am basically clueless on W10.

Here's a video btw on setting up a recovery disk from within Windows 7:



Basically this amounts to simply copying the installation files from the installation disk you made, then pasting them into a recovery partition. You, of course, must create the recovery partition first, but that's easy in Disk Management. The only extravagant work is that you have to download and use Easy BCD to add the option to boot into recovery mode to the Windows boot options dialog. Then again, handing your friend the W10 installation DVD could be considered a fair trade I guess. It's worth as much as the recovery partition for all practical purposes.

BTW, sorry about the confusion earlier on posting the partition information. I posted after your picture was up, but I hadn't seen the picture. All the information I needed was there. What I meant was post the names of the partitions and their size as you go down the list but in the same order they were presented (not reordered). The order explains which partitions are next to which. This is important for creating a new partition. In order to create a single partition from all the space created when deleting the two partitions, it was a necessity that the unallocated space be in a single block (the deleted partitions having been next to each other).

 

Thanks again for everything, you helped take the pressure off! I work nights so I won't see the owner for about 24 more hours. Even then, I'm not sure he remembers anything about his account information, he'll have to if he wants his laptop back!

Break time it is!

 

Here's the Dusk Management image your were interested in. I still need to check the activation and some other things but just so you know, everything is working as new! I went ahead and brought it too work and made a user. Been working on this under the new user. Will have owner change user information when I finally hand it over.

I'll log back in when I check activation.

 

And it looks like the activation process went smoothly as well!

So far, I'm not having any issues with this system...heck, I might keep it for myself!!!

 

Disk Management looks like I hoped so I guess you are good. Yeah, too bad you have to give it back. Windows 10 installation and activation process seems very seamless the few times I have installed it before . Well, hope you at least get a free lunch somewhere for fixing the thing...

 

OK, now I'm going to take a chance here and ask one more thing, if I need to start a new thread then that's fine. When this laptop first started having issues, I backed up a couple folders full of images to a dvd. Now that I have every thing back in order, I'm not sure how to get these images back on. I've looked at the DVD and I see the images listed such as: backup.swm, backup1.swm backup2.swm...

I also see a restore application, restore.exe on this disk and was wondering if that was how I get them back on the hard drive? Keep in mind, the images were the only thing that I backed up. I looked online but most pages refer to making a backup or restoring an ISO image. I'm just looking to put those personal pictures back on the hard drive. Thanks

 

Never mind, I found it. Seems the images were backed up with HP's restore program and needed to be restored the same way. Currently in the process!