The Notebook Review forums were hosted by TechTarget, who shut down them down on January 31, 2022. This static read-only archive was pulled by NBR forum users between January 20 and January 31, 2022, in an effort to make sure that the valuable technical information that had been posted on the forums is preserved. For current discussions, many NBR forum users moved over to NotebookTalk.net after the shutdown.
It depends on what you mean by "installed a fresh copy" of Vista HP.
If he updated the system from another OS without following the specific HP procedures, that can also create problems.
Also, if you haven't updated to Vista Home Premium Service Pack 1, you need to do that as it fixes a lot.
If you can explain what you meant by that in a little more detail, it could shed some light on how far you might need to go.
HP doesn't ship Recovery Disks with their systems - it's installed on a
Drive Partition, and to recover your system to factory settings all you need to do is run the Recovery Manager.
You can also do specific Driver Installs from the Recovery Manager and create Recovery Disks.
You can determine if you have the Recovery Partition by checking your hard drives:
1. If you have 1 internal HD, the RP is on drive D.
2. If you have 2 internal HD's, the RP is on drive E.
IF he didn't wipe out the Recovery Partition on the drive, then all you need to do is to run a Recovery from that partition.
1. Go to Start, type in Recovery.
2. Click on Recovery Manager.
3. Click on the Advanced Options button.
4. Select Recovery Disk Creation.
If the Recovery Partition is gone, then you'll need to get a set of Recovery disks from HP. HP does sell Recovery Disk Sets that match your original system configuration.
You'll need the Product # from the label under the system - it should be
FM428EA. If not, you'll need to use the different number and enter it into the
HP Customer Support page to find the right page.
Problems? See this thread at archive.org.
