Thanks for the help. I booted off the recovery disk. I went to repair. I
could not see my vista install on the list of installed o.a so I thought
maybe its because my drive is sata so I put the drivers on a USB drive and
attempted to install them they seemed to install but system repair still
cannot see my vista or my c drive. In command prompt i tried to chkdsk on c
but it said the drive is raw and this could not run on it. I then tried to
just go into c but it said it was not formatted.

So that's where I'm at now not much further sadly

TIA mcm

"John Barnes" wrote:
[color=blue]
> Can you get into your BIOS to run from the DVD? You can try this program.
> Some have had to burn to a DVD, others can get it to run from a CD.
> [url]http://neosmart.net/downloads/guides/Vista_Repair/Vista_Recovery_Disc.iso[/url]
> You can go to the neosmart site for instructions.
>
> "mcmcom" <mcmcom@discussions.microsoft.com> wrote in message
> news:69FA4587-94BC-4EDB-8964-5C6158FE1E8B@microsoft.com...[color=green]
> > no dice on the Shift F10.
> > Spoke with HP Support. They say its a HD issue and i have to send it in
> > for
> > servicing. Of course i have critical information regarding my work on
> > this
> > hd and now have no way to recover it. I also got a vista CD from a friend
> > and attempted to do the Repair option from it. VIsta install was
> > undetected
> > and i have no way to load drivers for my hard drive. :( So basically im
> > screwed because HP decided to make very poorly written backup and recovery
> > software.
> >
> > Heres how it works.
> > 1. You can use their recovery software as long as you dont encrypt you
> > drive.
> > 2. Once you encrypt your drive you have to set a new restore point.
> > 3. You are unable to set a restore point (unknown error) once the drive
> > is
> > encrypted.
> > 4. You try to recover your computer to factory defaults and are unable to
> > perform a restore until you disable drive encryption.
> > 5. You cannot disable drive encryption until you can boot into your OS.
> > 6. You cannot boot into your OS if you cannot get the boot options to
> > ever
> > display!
> >
> > WTF!?
> >
> > "John Barnes" wrote:
> >[color=darkred]
> >> Shift key and F10 may get you to a command prompt.
> >>
> >>
> >>
> >> "mcmcom" <mcmcom@discussions.microsoft.com> wrote in message
> >> news:56EEDEA7-1F02-43F5-A8D4-C0AAE63834BB@microsoft.com...
> >> > hi all,
> >> > i have an HP Compaq 8710p laptop that is about 10 months old. For no
> >> > apparent reason yesterday it just froze up and when i re-started it it
> >> > took
> >> > me directly into Startup Repair. Since then all it will do is boot up
> >> > into
> >> > startup repair and fix the same issue, then re-start itself and go back
> >> > into
> >> > startup repair, fixing the same issue over and over with no change.
> >> >
> >> > For some reason i am unable to press F8 to bring up boot options screen
> >> > during load. And this is easily the most annoying part about the whole
> >> > situation. there is absolutely NO WAY to interrupt the boot options
> >> > and
> >> > get
> >> > a "selectable" list of boot options, for some reason it ONLY goes to
> >> > Startup
> >> > repair.
> >> >
> >> > Startup Repair never lasts too long at all only about 20 seconds each
> >> > time.
> >> > The diagnostic code in the details is as follows: (this is the only
> >> > problem
> >> > it detects)
> >> >
> >> > Root cause found:
> >> > Boot Manager failed to find OS loader.
> >> > Repair action : File Repair
> >> > Result : Completed Successfully. Error code 0x0
> >> > Time taken = 13400 ms
> >> >
> >> > So it states that it has fixed it but every time i restart it i get the
> >> > same
> >> > issue. I cant boot from cd because of course HP in its infinite wisdom
> >> > decided to make this a "diskless" restore. Using their own branded
> >> > software
> >> > to restore your computer - of course there are no restore points (as i
> >> > couldn't make them some software issue) so now im forced to restore
> >> > this
> >> > back
> >> > to factory settings (which i really dont want to do)
> >> >
> >> > If anyone has any idea or had a similar problem like this please offer
> >> > any
> >> > suggestions. FYI i am a seasoned MS Programmer with about 2 decades
> >> > of
> >> > experience and in my lifetime i have never had such a hard time trying
> >> > to
> >> > fix
> >> > a computer. I mean comon, give me a command prompt or something. I
> >> > find
> >> > it
> >> > ridicolous that i cannot interrupt startup at any time[/color][/color][/color]