DV5T-1100 won't load windows.

Title says it all. Shut it off one day and it wont load windows the next day. I get to the HP logo on start up and then the screen goes blank. After about 5 mins, the HP logo come back up again indicating the system is stuck in a restart loop. I cant get it to enter safe mode. I have removed the battery and held down the power button for up to 60 secs. No go. By hitting the escape button while the HP logo comes up, i was able to get to a limited menu where you can check memory and supposedly the hard drive. Ran through all that. No go. Removed CMOS battery for 5 minutes. No go. About the only thing i have not done yet is reseat the memory. I'll try that soon. From experience, am i looking at possibly a dead HD or is this sounding like a mobo issue?

 

Ok. I removed the RAM and reinstalled. No go. I hope its just the HD as i ordered a new one that will arrive tomorrow. However, how come the HP hard drive test says it passed? Is that test substandard? Also, i dont have a recovery disk. How do i go about reloading Vista on the new HD? Do i have to borrow a copy and use the Activation key that came with my DV5?

 

Hi,

You might try the following:

1) Get a copy of Bootit NG ( http://www.terabyteunlimited.com), and install/burn it to a CD. When you unzip the download .ZIP, run "makedisk", and it'll take you through burning to a bootable CD.

2) Boot the CD on your laptop, and click "Cancel" which will take you to the maintenance mode.

3) Click "Partition Work", and see if it sees your (original) hard drive as "HD0".

If it does see your original hard drive, and after you get the new drive, put the new drive into a USB enclosure.

Then, plug the USB enclosure into your machine, and boot to the Bootit NG CD.

Hopefully, when you go to Partition Work, you'll see two hard drives (HD0 and HD1).

Assuming that HD0 is your original drive, use Bootit NG to Copy the partition from your original drive to the new drive.

After copying the partition, make sure that it's "Active", then power down, and take the new drive out of the USB enclosure and put it into your laptop, in place of the original drive.

Then, boot your machine again, and hopefully, it'll boot.

The above all assumes that when you go to Partition work, that you can see your original drive and its partitions, and that the partition copy (using Bootit NG) works...

Good luck,
Jim

 

So the hard drive was the problem. I loaded a clean copy of Vista on the new drive but my Microsoft sticker at the bottom of the laptop has faded so i cannot get the Vista product key. I called HP and they would not give it to me. Instead they tried to sell me a $20 recovery disc! Now i have the laptop back working but i have 30 days to activate it. HP will not give up the product key. How do i proceed from here? I currently see a product key in Control Panel/System but i suspect it belongs to the clean vista copy i installed and not the one from the laptop itself. Is that correct?