lost my HD my error

[frankbca]

have a HP 7360 Pavillion with winXP pro MCE 2005

made the required rescue DVDs (2)

all up-to-date with Microsoft including SP3.

All up-to-date with virus AVG.

I messed up on friday.

I was going to label a disk in the drive.

The disk was an MBR repair disk from Acronis (I think)

and I pressed the enter key

Like push here dummy.

result is Hd not recognised. sort of.

black screen with invalid operating system!

Did have a floppy with the ntldr,ntdetect.com.boot.ini,and hal.dll

which when I enter takes to the login screen and stops.

I tried the CD winXP PRO from my girl friend and when I get to R/console

No hd recognized. no fixmbr, fixboot, fixcfg/rebuild,

same results with 6 pack floppy rescue disks.

WD320 gb HD. did a test quick and full with floppy and came back as no errors found (Note the keyboard on my Girl Friends Computer writes only é for question mark.)

I tried the linux Knoppix, with testdisk 6 and it reads the HD along with the files. Now if only I can figure out how to be a root administrator than maybe I can change the hal.dll from the i386 folder to the system32 and maybe get back on.

This is a learning curve.

Bought Power Suite 2008 PRO and this went fine till it would tell me that my windows OS is on D:

not so. its on C: along with all other programs (NTFS). D: has the HP recovery files only (fat 32)

Sent them an email, and they replied that they have given my problem to their teckkies and if and when they have a fix they will advise. (Nice reply, like .... out to lunch... will be back... sometime.

So went to Microsoft and found that there was a Microsoft Diagnostic and recovery toolset which creates through a ISO a CD ERD command. Which I downloaded and tried. It goes and does it thing only to pop up with message The usage period for this ERD has expired. Like maybe 10 minutes. OUCH! I download again and do the CD and this time pop-up The usage period for this boot image has expired.

This is the link... it does say 30 day evaluation. Right

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details...;displaylang=en

How can I get and where else a ERD command download to make a valid CD

reading up on nLite to make a set of CDs

Please, can anyone help me get back on É

Edited May 26, 2008 by frankbca

[frankbca]

resolved by replacing the HD with a copy made with back-up button.

Now all I have to do is get 3 weeks work of the HD?

Will attach through USB and go from there.