Reinstall Windows 7 without original install discs

mcbudday · 16 Oct 2011

I bought an HP Pavilion laptop on Craig's list a few months ago for gaming purposes. It's nothing fancy, but what I could afford that would be able to handle world of warcraft. A few weeks ago, I got a very hard crash that made a loud noise and totally threw me off (this is my first PC in many years, usually buy macs). I'm told that it blue screened and after talking to some of my PC buddies it seems I need to reinstall Windows 7 because I'm having major registry errors that keep occurring (friends suggested using CCleaner to fix the registry and I"ve done it a few times and the problems keep returning. I don't have anything on this computer that I need to save (literally only use it for gaming) so I just want to do a clean install, but I"m unsure how to go about this without the original CDs (which I never got when i bought the machine). Is there something I can do? Any suggestions are welcome and I fully appreciate the help
Thanks

PS I saved the error message, pasted below

Problem signature:
Problem Event Name: BlueScreen
OS Version: 6.1.7601.2.1.0.768.3
Locale ID: 1033

Additional information about the problem:
BCCode: 3b
BCP1: 00000000C000001D
BCP2: FFFFF80002F8AFF3
BCP3: FFFFF880031A7E90
BCP4: 0000000000000000
OS Version: 6_1_7601
Service Pack: 1_0
Product: 768_1

Files that help describe the problem:
C:\Windows\Minidump\101211-55473-01.dmp
C:\Users\Tanavung\AppData\Local\Temp\WER-66419297-0.sysdata.xml

Read our privacy statement online:
Windows 7 Privacy Statement - Microsoft Windows

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C:\Windows\system32\en-US\erofflps.txt

Sub Styler · 16 Oct 2011

The HP laptop should have a recovery partition, there should be a HP tool to "create recovery disks". Once you have done that you can boot from them and restore your system to an as-new state. You will need blank disks for this.

it may be worth running check disk first.

Type cmd into the start menu then right click it and choose run as admin,

then type chkdsk /f into the command prompt it will say it cant, do you want to schedule it for boot time, press y then restart your computer.

ignatzatsonic · 16 Oct 2011

If I had a crash that made a loud noise, I'd probably want to run the hard drive manufacturer's utility to make sure the hard drive was in good working order.

mcbudday · 17 Oct 2011

Substyler, I cannot figure out how to make these "recovery disks" that you speak of. Can you explain how I might do that? Thanks!

Sub Styler · 17 Oct 2011

This explains it for you:
HP Recovery CDs | How to Create HP Recovery Disk

Craigslist is private ads is it not? Was the item bought "as new" because often people remove the recovery partition and HP tools to gain hard drive space, if this has been done, you will need to find another source for your installation media.