Hp freezes during system recovery xp media center

**Dan 59** · 03-18-2012, 05:55 PM

Hello I'm new here, have a fair amount of computer knowledge. Enough to get myself in and out of trouble----sometimes.

I’m trying to do a system recovery for Windows XP Media Center, on a hp m1070n Media Center desktop. It’s 2.8gh Pentium 4, 1gig of memory 2-512mb sticks., 160 gig SATA Hard drive, ASUS PCI exp. 128mb Video card, DVD R/W & CD drive. I removed tv card and modem and disconnected memory card reader before recovery. Also removed 2 sticks of 256 MB memory. I’m trying to install.
It went through format and coping files, but Recovery keeps hanging when it gets to : “ Recovering Windows XP and application files “ 1% and 24 seconds. I’m thinking maybe a hard drive thing. Because you can really hear the drive start spinning, during the period when it hangs.
It seems it has made a recover sector on the hard drive. I boots with out the recover disk in the drive if I hit f10 at startup, and tries to start recovery but hangs as described above.
I downloaded “ pc doctor “ to a cd, as recommended by hp. I can’t get it to boot on the hp. It will boot on another computer. On the hp I get “ NTLDR is missing “ I have checked and changed the bios boot order, to other cd drive, same problem. The lights come on, on the drives, like they are responding to the disk.
Any advice?

**Bama19642** · 03-18-2012, 09:02 PM

It could be a problem with the hard drive. Read this thread and see if it passes a test by either the original drive maker or the Hitachi Drive Fitness Test which works on all brands, all of which should be included in the UBCD. I'm guessing the PC is pretty well worn and you don't really need a workhorse, so you might want to look at the used Dual Core Pentiums shown here. For the cost of expensive hard drives it might be easier and less costly than fixing your current PC. If the shipping code "winterfree" still works you can get $100 orders shipped free.

You might have to clean the disk or the CD/DVD reader to test it or get the PC Doctor to work. You can clean a CD reader with a lens cleaning disk sold at most major retailers. If the CD still won't boot the PC, and you get a used one you can buy a SATA to USB cable from Amazon for ~$15 to test the drive and transfer files if the current drive is okay. I hate to sound like a sales person for that site, but with hard drives so expensive right now it might be the cheapest way to get yourself a working PC.

**bucksfanjimj** · 03-19-2012, 11:35 AM

While you have UBCD loaded, I would also run memtest 86+. This will test your RAM. Likely it's the hard drive failing.

**Dan 59** · 03-19-2012, 12:31 PM

Thanks for the info. I successfully downloaded UBCD this morning. The HP computer booted to it, and running hard drive check now. I didn’t see any tests for Seagate drives used CWSCAN5.12 EXTENDED TEST. Test runs a little over an hour. Then I will try memtest 86+. I'll post results as I get them. It’s nearly done now.

The disk test passed with no errors.
Memtest86+ failed with 5 errors !
I have removed one stick of ram and running memtest again.

Ran memtest again on the 1 stick of ram and passed.
Restarted the XP Media Center Recovery and it passed the point where it was freezing before, at 1%. BUT now it has stopped again. At 80%.

**bucksfanjimj** · 03-19-2012, 02:26 PM

Seatools for DOS is Seagate's diagnostic utility and it should be on UBCD.

"Ran memtest again on the 1 stick of ram and passed.
Restarted the XP Media Center Recovery and it passed the point where it was freezing before, at 1%. BUT now it has stopped again. At 80%."

Take that same stick and move it to the next slot and retest. Test it in each available slot. Then do the same with the other stick of RAM. You want to determine if it's one or both sticks of RAM or one of the slots that is failing. Probably an all day job. Unfortunate but necessary.

**Dan 59** · 03-19-2012, 09:39 PM

Thanks bucksfanjimj & Bama19642. I think we can mark this one solved.
I did find the Seagate drive test in ubcd, I just hadn't scrolled down to the next page. da, sometimes you just feel like a dud.
It passed the seatools test. I did go through the memtest on each memory stick and each slot. They all passed. So I tested 2 then 3 and finally all 4 it passed every time. So with all the memory on the board I proceeded with the Restore. Started and froze. Tried again froze. Remove the stick that acted up during the first memtest. The program stopped and I got a warning regarding memory problem with a bunch of, I assume mem addressed. Took out the other Crucial memory stick and away it went sailed right through the Restore, with the other 2 sticks of memory. Then just to make sure I switched those sticks to the other slots. It's working fine now. So that pretty much ruled out the other memory slots.
Thanks again for the help, and introducing me to UBCD.

**Bama19642** · 03-19-2012, 10:04 PM

Good to hear you found the problem. Whoever took all those tools and made the UBCD is the real hero, it has helped solve many problems for our members.