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Tattooing HP’s

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After updating Bios on my HP Pavillion XE I can no longer use old recovery disks that came with computer — screen comes up and says Sorry unable to use this disk Disk is for A HP computer only…
How can I fix this? or is there a fix — I Changed HDD one that came with it was a Maxtor 40 gig I changed it over to a WD 80 and the Maxtor is a slave drive

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Reply To: Tattooing HP’s

In reply to Tattooing HP’s

This can be fixed and you do need the tatoo exe for the system. The procedure isn’t that hard but finding the files may be a bit more hard. I assume you’ve searched HP so you may try contacting them to get the file.

Create an MS-DOS startup disk and follow the instructions for the tatoo. It should work with the serial number of the system.

Did you make a backup of the original bios?

Reply To: Tattooing HP’s

In reply to Tattooing HP’s

Most system builders (well, the large ones anyway) who use OEM versions of windows generally stop you from installing the OEM version (in your case your restore disk) on another PC.

There is a small portion in the BIOS that will mark it as a HP machine and the restore disk will look for this.

If you have updated the BIOS and you are sure it is the correct one then I would definetly get in touch with HP … they should be able to send you a “patch”.

Reply To: Tattooing HP’s

In reply to Tattooing HP’s

No offense, but don’t buy HP. They send disks that are proprietary to the hardware they install. I had the same problem on a family member’s computer. The HD crashed and we needed to buy a new one. Unfortunately, the backup disks were made to recognize only the hd that was put in originally. (Very nice i must say. Go to hp and buy a hd from them so that you can get their computer working again.) Hewlett Packard? used to do the same thing. Now, that name is out of the market. I solved this problem by installing an old personal version of win98 then upgrading to the desired os. Try that.

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