deleted patition now what

I was trying to format my harddirve on my hp laptop becuae i wanted to get rid of all the thing hp did to winxp(it was causing it to perform very slow), it wouldn't let me format it so i went to use partition magic to make a new partition and then go partition the c drive. it wouldn't let me do that either, so i just deleted the partition. little was i thinking that hp put their own bios in the computer and i have no idea where to go from there. it just says there's no os but doesn't give the option to do anything. how do i install a new version of xp.

 

Do you have an HP emergency recovery disk? I'm hoping you aren't going to say it was on the hard drive....I know that's where my brother's recovery disk is....

MBN

 

As I recall when you delete a partition you need to define an active partition. from the A:/ prompt type FDISK > set active partition > re-start > then format the new active partition. You should now be able to re-install XP.
Hope this helps

 

i do have the recovery disk, i just got to go find them, i'll give it a shot when i find them. The only problem with using fdisk is that it doesn't give a prompt. I was going to do that exact procedure, but it wouldn't give a prompt. then i tried to go into the bios and boot from the cd drive but hp customized the bios and it's completely different. it doesn't give the option.

 

Nevrmind all that, gues i wasn't paying attention before, i wasn't looking at the bios before. i turned on my comp right after posting that last message and saw something saying to hit f2 for setup, didn't see it before. installing windows now. Thanks for the advice.

cquigley

 

find those emergency disks....It's been a while, but if I'm not mistaken, XP should prompt you for partition info when it tries to install....

Good luck,

MBN

 

Glad you got it sorted