HP laptop requesting boot disk

[katie_brown]

Hi
I have been helping a friend out with his HP laptop. The laptop was used at a house party and the day after wouldn't start it requested the system recovery disks and he lost everything through recovering the system.
It's worked ok since for about 2 weeks but he took it abroad to Indonesia and whilst sat in the airport tried to watch a film the laptop froze and he rebooted it by holding down the 'power' button. It now wont re-start it just repeatedly asking for the boot disks. Are these the recovery disks? Any idea what has caused it? Could it be a virus?

Thanks xx

[kaninelupus]

Yes, the boot disk is the recovery disk.

As to cause?? Not really enough info to say for sure. The likely boot issue could well have been caused by the forced power-down. As to the cause of the freeze, really would need more info to hazard a guess.

Does he have important files he needs to recover before attempting a recovery or re-install??

[katie_brown]

Yes, the boot disk is the recovery disk.

As to cause?? Not really enough info to say for sure. The likely boot issue could well have been caused by the forced power-down. As to the cause of the freeze, really would need more info to hazard a guess.

Does he have important files he needs to recover before attempting a recovery or re-install??

hey, thanks ever so much for responding everythng was backed up last time onto an external hard-drive it's just a shame as it's the second time in 2 months this has occurred. Will post more information once I have the laptop in my hands - he returns thursday, thanks again :) x

[kaninelupus]

hey, thanks ever so much for responding everythng was backed up last time onto an external hard-drive it's just a shame as it's the second time in 2 months this has occurred. Will post more information once I have the laptop in my hands - he returns thursday, thanks again :) x

No probs. Is funny, someone else on here recently had their notebook go haywire in an airport recently. The advantage there was at least the system was bootable.

If is asking for boot disk, itmay be capable of restoring rather than fresh install, but you won't know until you actually have the restore disk and laptop in the same location :-/

[katie_brown]

lol odd, serves them right for going on holiday lol,

ok, thanks :) will let you know on thurs xx