I do believe you'll lose all your data if you do factory reset, but I don't know for sure.

This might help out.

http://ccm.net/forum/affich-76156-restore-my-hp


Try to get to system restore and roll-back to a previous save. If you select format you'll probably need an installation disk with original software and I don't think you have that.

Good luck.

You might try going to HP website and find the information to use the utility for your specific machine.

Thank you. I am looking. ^^ and do I use a regular cd to back things up?

maybe if I can figure out how to hook up something like an hdmi cable and such. my pc does not have a port, but I am sure I can find an adaper or another method other than vga.

Like I hooked one monitor to the first with hdmi. could that work?

Well the files used to create the disk utilities aren't that big so I suppose a CD ROM would work, though I would prefer using a DVD ROM myself.

As far as a HDMI output? I'm not sure that would work if your video mode is compromised with the attempted upgrade.

I'm curious did you in fact see your existing monitor work when you did got into BIOS mode? You saw a screen with menu options, right?

If so then once you put the recovery disk into the drive and it actually boots off of it then your monitor will probably work by default. I would work on getting that recovery disk created and then try to boot off of that before I went to the trouble of hooking up a HDMI cable ..just sayin'.

What is your computer mode? I know it's an HP but is it a HP Impresario or 2600 or what?

Let me know how things go.

MrMinos

Did you try to use the HP utility to revert to a previous restore point? Does it give you that option? If it does then I would use that.

bios normally has nothing to do with the datas on your harddrive. a reset there will only reset your values and changings you made.