HP Recovery Process "stuck"

Hi,

I bought an HP Pavillion s3123w (slimline) computer with Windows Vista Home Premium 32 bit. 9 months later, the hard drive is clicking and when it clicked, it froze the computer for several minutes. All indications point to bad hard drive.

Called HP and they sent me a new hard drive and recovery disk set to use on the new hard drive (wouldn't just send a Windows Vista disk and one wasn't included with the computer).

Anyways, swap out the old hard drive for the new one and proceed to recover/install windows onto the new hard drive. Disk 1 went just fine and disk 2 ran for 20 hours before I finally called HP back. They cannot tell me what's wrong with the install, however, I'm able to get onto the internet and register here and type this as we speak, so potantially, it's an HP software problem and not a Windows problem (my guess, anyways)...

There is a progress bar stuck on the desktop apparently trying to install some nvidia driver. It was and still is at 26%. I've rebooted and the HP software starts running again, along with the stupid progress bar stuck at 25%.

HP wants me to ship the computer back to them for a few weeks so they can fix it, but I thought I'd try here first to see if anyone has a clue as to what's wrong.

If the machine does have an add-on nVidia video card you could try removing it and running off the onboard graphics temporarily and do the reinstall...
Then hunt down the proper drivers and re-install the card.
Just a thought.

Thanks! If it has an nVidia graphics card, it's not one that I installed and was stock on the PC when I bought it - I will check it out. Thanks for the suggestion!

Hi justin2009, welcome to the board.

Bad contact of the SATA cable to the HDD is a known cause of this sort of problem. So try to disconnect and reconnect wiggle, tug, and shake the connector at the HDD to see if it help. Replace the SATA cable with aftermarket one when you have a chance.

Hope this helps,

Bruce