Po
Don't forget to make a set of recovery disks for your hp & use good quality media,if you don't make a recovery set you'll have to buy them from hp if your hdd shits itself, it's the only way to reinstall windows onto a new hdd,you need to use good media as those twits at hp only allow you to make 1 set.I don't know why as they can't be used on any other machine other than that model of hp

Push F8 to get to safe mode assuming all hp's are the same.

I just did a compltet System Recovery, reformat, etc. I am staring at WindowsXP Blue skin *gak and about 18 or 20 icons on my desktop of all the goodies HP throws in here.

I wanna clean this crap out right.

You may want to shield your eyes. This is what I got. I haven't removed anything yet.


I know the 'Game Channel' is crap.

My 2 biggest problems are going to be properly uninstalling Norton/Symantec
and
properly removing all this other crap that is sitting somewhre in my system waiting to be installed, like Quicken, the 60 day Office trial,HR Block and heaven knows what else.

I would really love some good solid advice on getting symantec/Norton completely off of here. It's not 'completely' installed, but on the second restart, it started to install and I stopped it.


And please hurry. I'm starting to like that nifty little Compaq/Walmart sidebar thingy they call Compaq Organize. It..it almost seems to be calling to me...

There's a number of options at your disposal po' ,the question is which road to travel

1)-Use symantec's downloadable removal tool before attempting anything first as it can in some cases break systems..lol..,remove the rest of the goodies that hp were kind enough to let you have ,once system is cleaned up,untick hybernation box,not sure if necessary but set page file to none,reboot to safe mode & defrag & disk clean up,registry clean with ccleaner,reset pagefile to whatever size tho it would be best above 1GB,i've got 1gb ram & set my pf to 2gb,then rebbot back to windows,install your most used programs first,then the others,after that lot head to ms & don't leave till fully updated. once everything is back to normal use disk imaging software to make a complete backup to another hdd,the image can go onto a disk that's smaller so long as the data does'nt exceed the drive's capacity,this link is to a free imaging software,i don't know how well it works as i've never used it,for other imaging there's acronis 9.0 or above or ghost.

WWW Link

2)-create recovery disks if you have'nt already(should be in "pc help & tools or just poke around the all progs list),then if you have a spare hdd test to see if the disks work,you'll need to remove the original hdd & set the secondary to master for this operation ,if all goes well,make some copies of those burned disks & put em in a safe place,then get a RETAIL copy of xp home or prof & load it onto whichever hdd you want this will free up some GB as there won't be a FAT recovery partition or any junk,again load most used programs first,update,defrag & use imaging software to make a complete backup to another hdd.


That's pretty much it use imaging software to create backups.

ps: it may not be necessary to make those recovery disks as i think's it's possible to use any xp home disk to re-install using the original OEM key on your sticker at back of machine ???

pps: been in your situation so everything i've said about imaging i've done,i also got me self a retail copy of xp prof onto a large hdd,made an image for recovery purposes & kept the original 40gb xp home as a spare in a cupboard if i ever need it,if all goes to custard i can be backup & running in the amount of time it takes to switch cables,to image say 200GB of data from one hdd to another it takes around 2-3hrs at a guess,either way a lot faster than deleting,installing,updating each time the shit hits the fan

My recovery set failed the last disk was corrupted,never again did i trust verification,luckily i managed to get a set of floppie download images from somwhere that i was able to use instead.

Po,
before you get too far you really need to scan your hard drive. See what brand of hard drive it is, go to the manufacturers website and download their diagnostic tools. That bad cluster message you got troubles me. If that drive is going bad you will be doing all of this for nothing unless you replace it.

Okay...
It's a Maxtor. Went to the web site and downloaded SeaTools for Windows. Passed everything except the SHORT DST test.
Followed site suggestion and downloaded SeaToolls for DOS. Since I ahven't installed anythin on the PC yet, I had to dowmload the free iso image burner the site reccomended to make the DOS boot disk for SeaTools.
Ran the boot disk..16 errors. SeaTools was able to fix them all. Ran it on my second internal hard drive and everything passed. Rescanned main disk and everything passed.

Thank you, Phoon. The disk appears to be good to go now. I've run into trouble with HD's before but it's always the last thing I think of when I am having any problems. This SeaTool app is quite handy. For me to burn and run a DOS disk is amazing. The app is very easy to use. I would highly reccomend it to anyone using SEAGATE or MAXTOR disks (not sure if it works on other brands) and it was all free, including the iso burning app.

Yrag has been helping me and I am waiting for him to answer my email before I go any further. he gave me quite the scolding on how bloated my system was with crap and add-ons and stuff that was redundant. (I'm a bad Smedley when it comes to add-ons)

I want get everything off of here I don't need (realplayer, weatherbug, etc) and then put on only what I need. (I had a few too many security apps and such running) Hopefully, resulting in getting the full use from my newly installed 2GB of RAM.

Yes, I concurr with CarGuy. The fix will most likely be a short term fix. Best to gather the essence of the piggy bank and get a new drive.

Po' you can pick up hard drives very cheaply at newegg.com

You are in capable hands with Yrag. Hopefully he'll suggest a good utility package to keep your machine running smoothly. I think he likes jv16 which is a great but TuneUp 2008 is equally impressive.