What is wrong with my PC?

I have a HP Pavilion a1357c

and now I can not get it to restore.

I took off the OS and deleted everything on the hard drive. Then I put the XP disk. Then on the screen it says disk failure, insert the system disk. then I tryed the HP recovery software but that did not work.

what is wrong, and what should I do to fix it?

I tryed that still does not work

Your PC might be set up to boot from the hard-drive, go into the BIOS and make sure that CD is set as the first boot device.G013M

tried it . that still did not work

If it really does say "disk failure" then there really maybe something wrong with the HDD. If the OS wasn't on there it'd say No Operating System Found. Unless it's trying to boot off the xp disc and thats where its failing.Realmkiller

So I should Get a new Hard Drive?

Don't make that assumption so fast.... i'm saying my opinion based on what you've provided.. if it's under warrenty have them check it because theres still alot of other stuff that could bring up those errors.Realmkiller

its not under warrenty. So what should I do? or what would you do if you were me?

Well, to confirm if its the hard drive, get knoppix, and put it in there. Boot it up and see if you can reformat the hard drive in knoppix using QTparted. If you cant, then It might be kaput.carrot-cake

what I do not understand? please explain to me again

I have a HP Pavilion a1357c

and now I can not get it to restore.

I took off the OS and deleted everything on the hard drive. Then I put the XP disk. Then on the screen it says disk failure, insert the system disk. then I tryed the HP recovery software but that did not work.

what is wrong, and what should I do to fix it?

Neubauer4

Hi. How old is your system? Do you have a floppy drive? Make sure there's nothing in it. Was your system working fine earlier? Go into your BIOS and list what it says for devices under first menu selection. Do you see all your drives under there? Go into the Boot menu in the BIOS and tell me what the first boot device is.

G013M is probably right. You may be booting from your hard drive and since this just happened after you deleted your OS, this is no doubt the case.

okay look, diagnose it,

go to google and find knoppix, its a linux os

burn it to a disc and change you ios to boot from cd

(its not an installation its a whole system)

if it boots and youre able to save text documents etc, then your hard drive is fine

change you ios to boot from cd

blooddrunk

If he needs to do that, then there's the problem. You can't boot an HDD if there's no OS installed.

actually you can run knoppix, ive had to when i didnt have access to a windows cd, but it will run as all files are on that boot disk, and i thought hed have to change it or at least check since it seems he hasntblooddrunk

Yes, I know. My point was that if he isn't already booting from the ODD, then the problem is exactly that. In order for him to access the Windows installation disc, he needs to have the disc drive as the first boot device. Otherwise he's probably trying to boot into the HDD which current has no boot kernel.