SR1920NX desktop - hard drive mystery

[mysteriesofhp]

Hello Everyone.  My name is Jeff and this is my first time on the HP board.  I've never had a problem with any HP products before but basically all heck broke loose the past 48 hours.  My next door neighbor a 80 yr old lady wanted me to fix her computer, a compaq sr1920nx.  Lets step back a few weeks to a month ago.  First no way to get into windows XP at all, no safe mode, no normal startup, etc it all just kept rebooting.  So I hit F10 and went to system recovery.  Upon the next screen I gave the hard drive a SMART test.  A error was revealed of HD521-2W.  Upon looking on the net to find the answer I found out that it meant failing hard drive or hard drive failure.  At that time I did a system recovery with the F10 and got it back to operational status. 

Fast forward now to Dec 22-23.  She calls me up and the SAME thing happened.  I told her that error said that sooner or later her hard drive was going to fail.  So I figured Ok, just buy a new SATA hard drive and the recovery discs.  I purchased a 320 GB Western Digital Caviar Blue hard drive from best buy (pretty good deal too 69.99).  I got home and installed the drive, fired up the computer and put in disk 1 like it said to.  I got the screen of no operating system detected or bad partition, press R for complete recovery. (maybe not those exact words but close to that if not exactly)  I pressed R  it said it was setting up and creating the partition.  The CD spun around and the led lit up, I saw the hard drive led light up, and I got the great big black screen with the COMPAQ logo with the little red dot line going across from left to the right then disappear and then go back to the left and continue. 

I read the instructions that came with the recovery cd set and none of what it said came up on the screen.  So I called HP and told them what was happening.  They said they couldn't do much to help me since the warranty was up on it.  But I did ask them if the cables was bad, or if anything I was doing was wrong they said no but that hard drive might not work with that computer.  I was flabbergasted!  I have always been taught that any size hard drive will fit on a computer that has XP and up because of the NTFS.  I called up western digital and the drive was good they said call HP back again.  Going back and forth figuring this stuff out, I prob called HP at least 15-20x over the past 48 hours, including when I ordered the recovery disc set.  I looked on the net to find out what was going on, then I heard something about HP's motherboards and hard drives had something called a Tattoo? 

Also I heard that the drives from HP had a certain or hidden partition specially created by HP so their recovery discs would only work with those drives.  I had to find out the truth - turn out quite a few ppl have claimed this to be true.  I had never heard of such a thing b/c well I own a dell and haven't had these problems.  So I had HAD it with tech support esp when I decided to just screw it and get a hard drive from HP and they said that this compaq computer its limit was 200 gb - which is what it came with.  This one tech support guy named Sunny he kept on saying my card was declined and tried another and another kept on saying that the cards were declined.  And for some reason wanted to sell me a 500 gb to a 2 TB drive and I was like you just told me the limit of the computer was 200 gb!!  Finally I had had enough of him and ended the call. 

So I called up HP's replacement parts number and said the heck with tech support I had had ENOUGH of them.  I talked to a really great guy named well lets just call him J (don't want to get him in trouble or anything) and he apologized for what all happened, hoped my experience had not turned me away from HP products and I purchased a 200 gb hard drive which I also found out the techs lied to me about the price!!!  Oh how I was mad at the techs but really pleased with J.  So pleased that I asked to speak to his supervisor - I wanted to recommend J for a raise or promotion.  After talking with his supervisor about what all happened he assured me that steps would be taken since the techs were supposed to treat customers with a LOT more respect than they showed me.  The supervisor  was so grateful of me telling what all happened he gave me FREE shipping on the drive.  I was VERY pleased and he said that according to his computer that Yes only a 200 GB drive would work on this compaq computer.  He also suggested that I talk to a geeksquad person and find out more about this if possible. 

Well I took the drive back to best buy and got my refund.  I talked to a geeksquad girl and she said no that's not right at all.  The recovery discs should have worked with any drive - doesn't have to be from HP - they repair computers with the hard drives they sell in the store.  So this leads me to think, who is lying??  The geeksquad girl - or is HP really putting something on their drives so that you HAVE to buy a hard drive from HP?

Sorry for the long post especially being my first one hehe

Thank you all and its great to be here!

Jeff

[gkdiamond]

Welcome to the board Jeff.

I'm going to have to go with the GeekSquad, the 320GB WD HDD should have worked just fine. I don't think anybody was lying but unfortunately it sounds like they just didn't know what they were talking about and were just following a script (e.g. "...according to his computer..."). As far as the hidden partition, it contains everything to do a system recovery without having to use disks. 

Plenty of people have replaced their hard drive with one of their choice that was not ordered from HP. Even looking at the HP documents below you can see there is no indication that you have replace the hard drive with one from HP.

http://h10025.www1.hp.com/ewfrf/wc/document?docname=bph06847&cc=us&lc=en&dlc=en&product=3184154

http://h10025.www1.hp.com/ewfrf/wc/document?docname=c00639864&cc=us&lc=en&dlc=en&product=3184154

http://h10025.www1.hp.com/ewfrf/wc/document?docname=bph07119&cc=us&lc=en&dlc=en&product=3184154

http://h10025.www1.hp.com/ewfrf/wc/document?docname=bph07144&cc=us&lc=en&dlc=en&product=3184154

http://h10025.www1.hp.com/ewfrf/wc/document?docname=bph07145&cc=us&lc=en&dlc=en&product=3184154

You left us without a conclusion - Did the 200GB HD from HP work and even more importantly, did J get his raise/promotion?

[mysteriesofhp]

Thank you for the welcome =)

Well I don't know if he got his promotion or not but this happened today - I ordered the new hard drive from HP and they said it has a 90 day warranty on it so I should have it on Mon or Tues. 

But I'm confused, if the 320 would have worked,  why didn't it?  It just sat there with that COMPAQ logo and then after one of the supervisor techs advised -  let it sit like that for a hour, if it doesn't do anything then shut it down.  Well I let it sit there and lo and behold I got the blue screen.  The bottom said:

*** STOP: 0x0000007B (0xF79AE640, 0xC0000034, 0x00000000, 0x00000000)

So, if the recovery discs were meant for this machine, why didn't it accept the 320 gb drive?  I had everything connected up, and in Thrd Channel Device 0 (where the old hard drive had appeared) was the new drive  [WDC WD3200AAKS]

In all the times I've dealt wiith Dell - I've never come across a situation like this before!  That's for sure lol.

Not putting down HP at all, I had a compaq laptop a LONG time ago and did fine for me, and most of my printers (minus one xerox printer all in one) has all been HP's. 

Thanks and ALL help is MOST welcome.

Criticism is ok too but only if its helpful (how else will I learn? lol)

Jeff

[gkdiamond]

The HP document in the fourth link has a section titled:  Error: 0x0000007B or PC repeatedly restarts after recovery

that specifically address that error.

[mysteriesofhp]

Error: 0x0000007B or PC repeatedly restarts after recovery

If this error message is displayed, perform the system recovery again. If you are using a supplemental recovery disc (select models only), make sure that you remove the supplemental disc before restarting the PC.

I did that  at least twice before giving up and taking the hard drive back and getting the 200 gb from HP.

[mysteriesofhp]

Mission Accomplished - sort of.  I got my replacement hard drive from HP and it was a refurbished seagate  but I ordered a 200 GB and they were nice enough to send me a 250 GB instead at no additional charge.  I put in the first recovery disc in and it was smooth sailing from there on.  I'm starting to think that HP/Compaq does put in a certain partition only by them so that their recovery discs work only with their drive they sell.  What do you all think?  Has this happened to any of you?

Thanks for all the help everyone

I hope to be posting more here

Jeff