Relacing HP Notebook Hard Disk

Relacing HP Notebook Hard Disk

Postby stephen » Sat Feb 14, 2009 6:01 pm

I had a HP NC4400 notebook and I tried replacing the drive by imaging the drive to a new hard disk.

( I have made use of a USB CD Burner to access a CD rom from the noteboo, and a USB Hard Disk to make backups)

When I tried the new imaged Hard Disk the notebook would not boot it would just have a black screen with a cursor blinking in the top left of the screen.

I can boot into the OS by using a NTLDR boot disk to get back into Windows.
see
http://www.tinyempire.com/notes/ntldrismissing.htm

Now from Windows I used the Microsoft NTBackup program to create a full backup of the drive onto a USB Hard disk.
I also create a set of HP recovery CD's

Next I boot from the HP recovery CDs
and follow the instructions verbatim for
Preparing the hard drive for recovery using the recovery discs (Manufacturer Menu)
http://h10025.www1.hp.com/ewfrf/wc/fastFaqLiteDocument?lc=en&dlc=lv&cc=lv&docname=c00608578#N1843
1. Insert recovery disc 1 into the notebook and restart.
2. When the PC restarts, it reads from the Recovery CD/DVD, and displays a screen of options (typically R, F, and Q.)
3. Press and hold the ctrl key, and press the Backspace key. The Manufacturer Menu is displayed.
4. Select option 4, "Clear the partition table."
The following message appears: No Operating System Installed or Partition Corrupted Press "R" to perform a full system recovery.
5. Do not press R. Instead, press and hold down ctrl , then press Backspace to bring up the Tools Menu.
6. Select option 5, "Erase the Master Boot Record of drive."
The following message appears: No Operating System Installed or Partition Corrupted press "R" to perform a full system recovery.
NOTE: If there are no partitions, the following message appears: No MBR or master boot record found. Continue using these steps .
7. Do not press R. Instead press and hold down ctrl , then press Backspace to bring up the Tools Menu.
8. Select option 6, "wipe all sectors of drive."
An Erasing Hard Drive progress bar will appear. This process may take longer than one hour to complete, depending on the size of the hard drive. When the hard drive is completely erased, the following message is displayed:
No Operating System Installed or Partition Corrupted Press "R" to perform a full system recovery.
9. Press R to begin the automatic System Recovery process.



Now I have a drive that the recovery Partition from which I can install windows which destroys all the old data on the hard disk.
I can now boot into windows.
This notebook had been connected to a Domain Controller and the login was to the domain so I have to pick Directory Service Restore Mode
I boot into Safe Mode with Directory Service Restore Mode:
I run the ntbackup program and select restore right click on FIle and select Catalog file and Browse to my previous backup on the external USB disk and select this.
Now I select option to Overwrite all files restored
The restore completes and now I can log into windows with all the files programs and settings from the previous old hard drive.


Note! the above solution took me two days of trial and error before I could get this to work. The Preparing the hard drive for recovery using the recovery discs (Manufacturer Menu) http://h10025.www1.hp.com/ewfrf/wc/fastFaqLiteDocument?lc=en&dlc=lv&cc=lv&docname=c00608578#N1843 was the only way I could get the drive to be boot able.
stephen
 
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Joined: Thu Feb 09, 2006 9:37 am
Location: Brisbane

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