I am experiencing SERIOUS problems w/ Windows ME on my HP Pavilion XE748. Here’s what happens when I turn the system on…

The blue screen will appear with the HP Invent logo, this goes away and the Windows ME screen appears. The screen will display and a black screen appears. At the top of the screen a message flashes that starts with “Error…� and then the computer shuts off.

I can use a Start Up Disk to “boot� the system to a screen that gives me the chooses of Normal Mode, Bootlog, Safe Mode, or something else. It does not matter what I select…the computer goes to the black screen and then shuts off.

I was able to do a Scandisk \all \surface. It found a “ton� of errors that I selected to “Fix It� and the scandisk finally finished. I tired to restart after the scandisk and defrag (surface scan), but the same problem occurs. I tired to do a system restore, it said that it found a setting that was “good�, I restarted the system, but the same thing happened.

I tired using my HP Recovery CD to restore/reload the Windows ME. However, when I start the system, it does not recognize that the Recovery CD is in the drive. The drive will flash, but it doesn’t start the Recovery program. I have tired running the Recovery CD from the “prompt� but I receive an error message that the program cannot be run in DOS.

I tired everything that I can think of, so much so that I actually burned out my power supply. I just replaced it with a unit that is 300 watts, compared to the 100 watt that came with the HP unit.

*** How can I get my system to “boot� or recognize the Recovery CD at start up so I can reload Windows ME? ***

*** I also have Windows XP Upgrade CD that I would love to be able to use. However, how can I do this with the way my system is current operating? ***

I NEED SOME SERIOUS HELP….ANY INFORMATION YOU CAN PROVIDE WOULD BE GREATLY APPRECIATED!!!! THANKS IN ADVANCE!!!!!!!!!!

personally I'd use a boot disk to get a dos prompt, run fdisk, wipe the drive and start again. Assuming you have a normal windows disk as well as the upgrade.

Can you catch any more of the text of that error before the screen blanks? That could help us narrow things down.

Hi, I'm not very familiar with my Win-ME,but, on getting errors I have found that restoring the Master boot record Helps,with any serious hang up.

At dos prompt type:

fdisk /mbr

Full command looks like this

C:/fdisk /mbr
Note the space between the end of fdisk and the slash before mbr. That should take a short while >restart the PC. I'm not an expert,but, this does work for me. good Luck.

From the bootdisk run fdisk if it's ok at the prompt type sys c: and/or copy *.* c: Hopefully this might get you back to normal.