Originally posted by M.M. Floors:
If you have an Xp setup cd-rom. Do it in your drive. Restart computer. It will ask for Setup/Restore/Exit. Do Restore, and see where the ship ends.
When Restore doesn't come up, make sure you have Bios correctly edited. First boot must be Cd-Rom in stead of 0 (or something with an ZERO in it).
Hope it works
I'm gonna take his word for it, since I never had to restore from CD...
If your computer doesn't boot from CD, you'll have to go into the BIOS. Scary shit, so don't fuck it up! Print this out. It goes something like this:
IF YOUR COMPUTER DOESN'T BOOT FROM CD:1) Put the XP CD in your cd-rom drive, and remove any floppy discs.
2) Reboot, and when it starts up again, hit the DELETE key until you get into the BIOS/CMOS setup screen.
3) Use the arrows to highlight the section that is entitled something like ADVANCED CMOS and hit Enter.
4) On this page, there should be the order in which your computer boots up from, i.e., Floppy, CD, then main Hard Drive (HDD-0). If it's set like that, it should've worked to begin with if there was no Floppy in the drive. If the HDD-0 is first, and then the CDROM, you'll have to switch them so the CDROM boots before the HDD.
5) Arrow down to the first boot device, and make sure it is Floppy or CDROM. If it's not, then hit Enter (I believe) to bring up your options. Arrow to CD or Floppy, then hit enter again. Do this until the order is one of the following:
FLOPPY
CDROM
HDD-0
CDROM
FLOPPY
HDD-0
6) After that change, hit ESC key to return to main menu.
7) DON'T BE TEMPTED TO CHANGE ANY OTHER SETTINGS!
8) Arrow over to SAVE AND EXIT, and confirm.
9) The computer should reboot, from CD.
10) If MM Floors is correct, there should eventially be a RESTORE option. I don't know what that does, but give it a shot.
Originally posted by Just Lou:
When I had my POS Compaq Presario, they did not give me the Operating System (Windows 98). The only thing it came with was the "Restore CD".
Ewwww! Okay, ignore all that then if you don't have an XP disk!
Okay, now...
Here's an article with instructions:
Restoring when Windows XP cannot start normally When you are unable to get to the Windows XP desktop, use one of the two following sections to restore Windows XP to a previous time:
1. Turn on the computer.
2. At the Compaq logo screen, repeatedly press the F8 key, until a Windows Advanced Options menu opens.
3. Press the DOWN ARROW key until Safe mode-Command Prompt Only is highlighted.
4. Press Enter and continue through any informational screens that pop-up.
5. When the command window opens, type:
c: and then press Enter.
6. From the C:\> prompt type:
cd c:\windows\system32\restore7. Press Enter, then type:
rstrui 8. Press Enter.
Use System Restore as normal to return the system to a previous restore point.
--
There is other info on that page if you don't have any restore points, etc.
Tell us how far you get, how you got there, and what errors you've gotten.
lol