HP Code Purple

Turns out HP computers with Vista can have the same “code purple” issue when recovering to the out of the box state. This comes from the manufacturer’s tattoo on the motherboard.  Fortunately the solution is about the same as when I ranted about HP computers with the code purple and XP issue.

Here are the steps to fix it:

• Download Ubuntu ISO from www.ubuntu.com
• Burn the ISO to a CD (use CD Burner XP if you don’t have burning software that will do ISO files).
• Set your BIOS to boot to CD if not already set
• Boot to Ubuntu Live..Navigate to Places…(HP hard drive)…hp\bin\CheckDMI
• Rename CheckDMI.cmd to CheckDMI.bak or simply delete it.
• Shut down Ubuntu, remove the CD, restart to Windows

Alternate solution:

• Remove the hard drive
• Slave it into a working Windows PC or use a USB enclosure to plug into a working Windows PC
• Follow the same steps as above for rename or delete

Click for a larger version

For other computer brands, follow the instructions above but look for the following file:

c:\SYSPREP\oobe.bat

There is an excellent (but long) discussion thread going on here.

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