Solved is it possible to without disk?reformat

[MacGyvr]

Brothers laptop is acting up. it's a HP pavilion entertainment pc windows vista home premium oemact 64 bit. a how to would be great if possible. thanks

Of course you can reformat a hard drive without an OS disc. But you can't reinstall Windows without it. Reformatting is not the same as reinstalling. Formatting a disc does one thing...it deletes everything on the disc and prepares it for re-use. It does not put anything back on the disc.

 

[gregrocker]

Try wiping the HD first then run the Recovery Disks. Click on the tutorial Theog linked in his post above: SSD / HDD : Optimize for Windows Reinstallation

You'll need to make a Win7 Repair CD to do the wipe tutorial: System Repair Disc - Create

Or you can burn to CD free Partition Wizard bootable CD: boot CD, click on HD to highlight it, from Disk tab select Wipe Disk with one set of zeroes.

Now the Recov Disks should autostart. If they stall again, try Clear CMOS - 3 Ways to Clear the CMOS - Reset BIOS.

While in BIOS setup, look for SATA controller setting, change it to AHCI first to try install, then IDE if that fails.

If it fails again, test your RAM and HD with extended CD scan: RAM - Test with Memtest86+
Hard Drive Diagnostics Tools and Utilities (Storage) - TACKtech Corp

 

[SubbinBlazer]

if i buy a new hard drive and purchase the windows 7 operating system disk i should be ready to go right? If so, what hard drive would you guys recommend for my laptop? i see their are some hard drives that have different rpm's. My bro does a lot of downloading/watching videos and likes to have a lot of music on his laptop...

 

[Britton30]

Yes you should. I would recommend at least a 7200RPM HDD of the largest capacity you can find.

 

[SubbinBlazer]

ok, cool. Got any links of any reputable hard drives i should go with for my laptop?

 

[SubbinBlazer]

Can someone recommend me a good hard drive for my laptop? I found some, but i don't know what brands/model i need... feedback would be great. thanks in advance!

 

[t-4-2]

Can someone recommend me a good hard drive for my laptop? I found some, but i don't know what brands/model i need... feedback would be great. thanks in advance!

Shouldn't you be talking to your computer manufacturer for suitable hard drive ?

 

[SubbinBlazer]

I was thinking about doing that, but i was trying to get help here since most of you guys have had expirience with hardware and was hoping that ppl from this forum can guide me through the correct path. I'll give them a call tomarrow. =) thanks

 

[Britton30]

Well, I am currently using a Maxtor(now Seagate), Seagte, and Western Digital. I have used a Samsung Spin Point as well. As I said get a 7200RPM and a large capacity that will match the interface (HDD connection) you have.
Brand is your choice, there will be people who praise and despise all I mentioned.

 

[MacGyvr]

In my opinion, a hard drive is a hard drive is a hard drive. Brands make very little difference.

 

[SubbinBlazer]

I havn't done that hard drive test. i find it to be to complex. i purchased the windows 7 home premium operating system disk . When i inserted the "64bit" disk and turned on the laptop it said to push any key to boot from cd. it didn't do anything and than i pused the any key again and it beep after i hit the keys...

 

[gregrocker]

What happens if you try to run the Win7 DVD from Vista desktop? Choose Custom install to overwrite the Vista partition.

If this works you should use the Product Key off the COA sticker on laptop since you already purchased the OS when you bought the laptop. Save the retail key for another install as it is good for life and can migrate wherever you want it.

 

[SubbinBlazer]

When i turn on the laptop with no disk it says: no bootable device, insert boot disk and press any key.

i just went to system diagnose and did the hard drive test and it only got 68% and the laptop shut down...

 

[gregrocker]

That's pretty clearly a failed or failing HD, although sometimes the manufacturer's own HD diagnostic/repair extended CD scan can repair surface problems, followed by Disk Check from the DVD/Repair CD Command Line to repair file system errors. This can salvage a failing HD, or pronounce it dead.

 

[SubbinBlazer]

oh, so more than likely i'll have afailing hard drive. My laptop hard drive info is: product number: 575567-001 250gb 6,200 rpm
HP sells me the same one for 68 bucks. or should i get a different one?

 

[gregrocker]

If you google the serial you can research it's replacement - it's 7200 rpm for example, which is a good thing.

But I would want to confirm it's dead with a bootable HD scan for the specific make of HD (HP does not make HD's). You can google the exact model number + specs to find the HD make, or pull it out to look for yourself and reseat it to see if that helps. Then download and burn to CD the maker's diagnostics, boot to run extended CD scan. Hard Drive Diagnostics Tools and Utilities (Storage) - TACKtech Corp

This video is for DV6000 but there's a HD video for almost every HP Ent notebook - just Google it:

 

[SubbinBlazer]

The hp rep. that i spoke with mentioned that if i go to their site shopping.hp.com that i'd be able to find the info about the hd, but i havn't had time just yet... thanks

 

[gregrocker]

Is it under warranty? They should replace it if it is.

 

[SubbinBlazer]

No, it's not. My warranty ended in Feb 2010 =(

 

[SubbinBlazer]

ok, so my bro went aheady and purchased a replacement har drive from HP and he also purchased windows 7 home premium operating system disk from a local bestbuy and everything is smooth, but their is no sound. we tried inserting the driver disk that came with the set of recovery disks from when we tried to revoer the vista operating system and the disk didnt auto run. we're not sure if we should use the sound driver from that disk or any of the other drivers from the disk or which drivers to get since it was a windows vista home 64bit and now upgraded to windows 7 home 64bit... feedback would be great. thanks