HP pavilion notebook pc recovery....

[gatorr4life]

I'm having trouble installing windows updates, recently. And it seems like a domino affect is occurring after more updates come out. It will tell me I have to restart the computer for updates to install, but one or two updates fail, causing the rest to fail as well. So I'm at like twenty something updates! I've tried to download them separately, but even that seems to not work completely. So I've decided to just start from scratch. How long will his take, roughly? And is it going to be a pain in but to get up and running after it finishes reinstalling windows? I'm not computer literate so I better not have to install drivers!

Or should I just leave it be and not worry about windows updates? This particular laptop is really only used for browsing the Internet. It's Vista by the way.

[HALLGATOR]

Do you not have your updates set to automatic?

[umcpgator]

You might want to read more in detail about each update or the error you are getting. Some have to be installed standalone without installing any other updates and that could be why its failing.

[gatorr4life]

This is not my laptop. (mother in laws) She dropped it a while back and I suspect that had something to do with this. A freind of hers took a look at it, and fixed it for her. He's actually a computer guy. Yes, the updates are set to automatic, but she doesn't let them finish sometimes, and who knows what she corrupted. That's the other possibility. All I know is there are 20 plus updates that I can't install. I've tried doing some by themselves and they failed. I don't know what else to do but erase and start over.

[LakeGator]

Since the computer is used for virtually nothing but web surfing and your mother in law probably doesn’t do the porn sites and other shady places the fact that many updates are missing is probably not a huge deal. Obviously, the best practice for all computers is to have them update with all updates so you’re doing the right thing but it might be that the system is adequate for her usage. Unless she is experiencing problems with the computer I would lean slightly toward letting it be.

The good news is that HP makes it very easy to restore the system as long as the recovery partition has not been deleted. Here is a web page (http://www.ehow.com/how_4814366_boot-hp-recovery-partition.html)that describes how to restore a Pavilion to its original setting. The most important step, of course, is to be sure that you have made a copy of any data on the system. In this case it might be that just the favorites or bookmarks are all that is needed to be saved. You can use the Windows transfer utility to make a copy of the settings and files to a flash drive. This page (http://support.microsoft.com/kb/928634) describes how.

Hope this helps – let us know how it goes!

[HALLGATOR]

This is not my laptop. (mother in laws) She dropped it a while back and I suspect that had something to do with this. A freind of hers took a look at it, and fixed it for her. He's actually a computer guy. Yes, the updates are set to automatic, but she doesn't let them finish sometimes, and who knows what she corrupted. That's the other possibility. All I know is there are 20 plus updates that I can't install. I've tried doing some by themselves and they failed. I don't know what else to do but erase and start over.

That's understandable as people do all kind of things to their computers. Hopefully what Lake suggested will work for you.

[gatorr4life]

Lake,

Her computer guy made three HP recovery CDs. (which tells me that maybe this has already been done) Should I use the CDs or follow the link that you gave me and let the computer do everything?

[Gator_Tom66]

Follow the link, it is a good one.

[gatorr4life]

Last question then. What happens if the computer is so corrupted, that during the process, it freezes. (yes, I know it can take several hours) I'm talking all day type deal. How do I power down with out destroying the computer? I'm nervous I'm going to do some irreversible damage! (whether it freezes or not) lol how about I pay one of you guys to do it for me!:grin:

[Gator_Tom66]

Last question then. What happens if the computer is so corrupted, that during the process, it freezes. (yes, I know it can take several hours) I'm talking all day type deal. How do I power down with out destroying the computer? I'm nervous I'm going to do some irreversible damage! (whether it freezes or not) lol


Before you start, get off any data, pics, music, documents that are important. Put them on something else.

If it freezes, hold down the power button for 10 seconds, that will turn it off. If it continues to freeze, you probably have a worn out hard drive or may have damaged the motherboard when it was dropped. Or maybe your lucky and it is just software related.

I guess it is out of warranty or you would have called HP. Lakes comments were spot on. For the way it is used, anti-virus is probably more important.

Good luck.

[gatorr4life]

Thanks. Guess I'll give it a try.

[gatorr4life]

Well I just finished the complete restore. Everything went flawless, MUCH to my surprise. Computer problems NEVER go away this easy for me. EVER! It took many hours to finish it all, especially the 100+ updates. Thanks for the help, guys. Much appreciated.

[Gator_Tom66]

Glad it worked out

[gatorr4life]

Spoke to soon. I'm gonna copy the failed updates tonight and see what you guys think.

[gatorr4life]

Figured out that it was a service pack update that needed my permission to continue. looking so far.