Within hours of my admonition to my 10-year-old that he needed to *not* execute programs he downloaded as he browsed the web...my Windows 7 HP desktop is bordering on brick status.
I have the Neosmart system recovery disk, and I have the recovery disks from HP (I've already gotten desperate to the point of ordering those). I've possibly hosed up my partitions from various efforts with the Neosmart system recovery utilities. I'm not worried about the data at all. I'd actually like to start fresh and have the kid banished to one of our older machines.
The problem is that, when I try to boot using the HP System Recovery disks for my system, I get the "Windows loading..." bar/message, and then I get to a "Windows Boot Manager" screen that tells me Windows failed to start and that I should insert my Windows installation disk and restart the computer.
Furthermore, it has "Status: 0xc0000225" and "Info: an unexpected error has occurred."
From searching around quite a bit, I know this isn't an uncommon error. BUT, the wrinkle is that I can't get past this screen -- not with the HP system recovery disks I ordered, nor with a Windows 7 System Repair disk that I downloaded and burned. I can't get to a command prompt to try any of the boot manager (bootmgr.exe?) steps that are documented.
I've had computers crater in the past, but the nuclear option has always been pretty reliable: slap the manufacturer's disc in the drive and start from scratch. In this case, that's not working.
Any tips or ideas would be greatly appreciated!
I have the Neosmart system recovery disk, and I have the recovery disks from HP (I've already gotten desperate to the point of ordering those). I've possibly hosed up my partitions from various efforts with the Neosmart system recovery utilities. I'm not worried about the data at all. I'd actually like to start fresh and have the kid banished to one of our older machines.
The problem is that, when I try to boot using the HP System Recovery disks for my system, I get the "Windows loading..." bar/message, and then I get to a "Windows Boot Manager" screen that tells me Windows failed to start and that I should insert my Windows installation disk and restart the computer.
Furthermore, it has "Status: 0xc0000225" and "Info: an unexpected error has occurred."
From searching around quite a bit, I know this isn't an uncommon error. BUT, the wrinkle is that I can't get past this screen -- not with the HP system recovery disks I ordered, nor with a Windows 7 System Repair disk that I downloaded and burned. I can't get to a command prompt to try any of the boot manager (bootmgr.exe?) steps that are documented.
I've had computers crater in the past, but the nuclear option has always been pretty reliable: slap the manufacturer's disc in the drive and start from scratch. In this case, that's not working.
Any tips or ideas would be greatly appreciated!