problem with hp

[pepsik]

my friends pc is really screwed up and he wants me to re-install windows. I have setup the bios to boot from disc. The problem is that the disc will not initialize when I place it in the drive on boot. Is there a special key for hp machines like f8 or f10 for hp machines?

[duffy90210]

If the BIOS has the CDROM as the first boot device, then in theory it should hit the CD first regardless, you sure the disc is bootable ?

[pepsik]

I checked the disc on a spare disc drive on my pc and installed flawlessly, on his pc it just hangs for a minute then proceeds with his virus ridden version of xp.

I read on a site it might be f10 to get the disc to boot.

[duffy90210]

You dont have many choices, I normally just hit them all at random as I cant remember which model needed what :)

[pepsik]

seems the trojan that was infecting the drive was corrupting the mbr and not allowing the boot from cd, cleaned up the virus and cleaned the registry and now I don't need to reformat his drive which he is very happy about.