joel406

Best brace yourself. From what I see in your post, your only real way to get a temporary fix is to run your restore disk. It will put your laptop back to the way it was when you took it out of the box. Your old HD has been dormant for too long. Files have corupted. The HP files to be exact. Which brings me back to the *temporary" remark I made earlier. You should already be familiar with the lovely software HP loads in it's laptops. It falls on its face first chance it gets and cripples your PC.

Your stuck with a restore. A repair my bring it back to an extent but will not last.

To permanetly fix your issues, get a Microsoft Vista DVD and use the product key on the green sticker on the bottom of the PC. Install Vista clean without the HP garbage and Norton IS 60 day trial or the MS Office trial or any other trial they may want to put you through.

Install Vista(whatever version), Phone Activate(no there is no other way) intall AV( a real one not Norton) some spyware protection and head for windows update.

I have seen you situation roughly 1788 times and speaking as a MCSE A+ (and a few others) tech.

Its all you got.

Sorry.