There is always more...
You have the recovery floppy, and your set of recovery CDees, and during recovery process of the thing, you get this message!
no valid information found
OEMSETUP then gets you to a DOSprompt.
well, in February 2004, I got exactly that message while working on a Packard Bell.
This was an imedia 5800, piii 800, marked with a label so I know it originally had 64Mb ram, 20 Gb HDD.
Because of this label, I knew it had been upgraded.
A 40GB replaced 20Gb, and 256Mb RAM was added
The original windows 98SE and bundled software was replaced by XP home sp1 for some reason unbeknownst to me.
The owner wanted a new hard disk fitted and recovery set re-installed.
(the machine had to go, and his drive contains sensitive data.)
After a peek at hardware manager, I disconnect the hard drive, and fit a new 40Gb HDD.
At power up, it stalls and I enter BIOS
BIOS reverted to 1904 when it hung
CMOS setup hung soon as one hit advanced CMOS setup
(I gotta reboot to get out)
Several options in advanced CMOS setup was unavailable (no bootorder, for instance)
replaced battery, still same thing, same hangs in BIOS
So I looked for BIOS update (looking for this is a nightmare, but I had the serial number and model number, and found this type of machine was described somewhere as kourou2, and kourou2 has a luna motherboard, and that was what finally got me to the BIOS and recovery floppy download.
I flashed the Packard bell, and when I enter CMOS setup it no longer hangs, and the advanced options like bootorder is there, and I think I am a happy camper.
What do I know, huh?
Next thing is recovery.
Recovery floppy launches, and I get an error
no valid information found
I get to google, and search for >
no valid information found recovery packard bell
which gets me here
http://cgi.measham.force9.co.uk/reply.php?id=5473,5501
please note that this site talked about a different model, but the directions it gave me worked well enough.
I had eyeballed the system's insides, and knew what hardware it had because I had looked insides and in hardware manager when XP was still running.
my comments are thrown in
BOLD
Quote:
Okay, here's how you re-tattoo a club 69, feel free to take notes everyone 
FIrst things you need are the recovery boot floppy and the recovery cd media (should be a three disk set with the part numbers 678516xx01 - 678517xx01 - 678518xx01).
the set I had was different, of course.
Second, you need to know the specification of the machine. The Club 69 spec is...
Model Club 69 Diagnostics (a list here)
I had other information.
Now, for the tattooing! Or rather, rebuilding the extended hidden sector. Tattooing will come at the end.
it turned out this machine I worked on didn't need the hidden extended sector for recovery, once it got tattood. The tattoo process used the info put in the hidden sector, tho.
First, boot off the recovery floppy, let it try to restore the system and tell you 'this computer has no valid information' then press the escape key until you get out to a command prompt.
From here, you want to type 'Q:' without quotations, followed by 'exths /restore' again without quotations - this will start the rebuild of the extended hidden sector.
For manufacturer, select 'Packard Bell'
Then input the part number and serial number of the machine, with the letters in upper case.
Select english as the language - if it asks for a country code, put in '01' w/out the quotations.
Things should stop for a second so you can recap the information you've input and redo anything you've incorrectly input. And off we go again!
For modem select CIS WS-5614HMMG.
For CD-ROM/DVD-ROM it should be CDROM Goldstar 40x CDR-8400B
Select 'Not In List' for special deal, unless you want to have freeserve bugging you to register.
For Motherboard you should select 'Miami FR520' unless you *know* you have a different motherboard.
Next, select 'Standard 105 Keys UK' unless you like the damn multimedia keys.
And then select 'Standard' for the mouse (this bit doesn't make much difference)
Next, select 'Not In List' for the soundcard since this model has an ESS-1 SOLO sound chip
Now select 'Symphonie Club UK' to ensure that word is preinstalled on the system for you
Select 'Not In List' again for video card
After another recap, enter 'PBE98' which worked here too.as your technical support code thus completing the exths and restoring you to DOS!
And that *should* do you!
well, that DID NOT DO IT for the imedia 5800. I selected the hardware I knew it had, and it said it updated, but i still got "no valid information" during recovery process.
If not, get back again to the command prompt from a failed boot of the restore disk and type tattoo /createdmifromhs though this shouldn't be necessary.
Jaak> this was what did the trick. The tattoo put the info from hs in BIOS, and Recovery would now finally launch.
I can't guarantee this will work, but it should do the trick if you keept your fingers crossed - if it doesn't work, let me know!
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My story doesn’t end here.
When recovery launched, the 40 giga HDD I had connected promptly became a 20Gb. Gdisk did that. (when I built the hidden sector, I had never seen an option to put in the size nor model of the hard disk..)
Anyway, I was not surprised… Just because I am curious about this, I connected an fdisked 10 giga HDD instead, and launched recovery.
It went a long way but failed at reboot (no wonder, the drive showed wrong size… 20Gb on a tenner?
I had to use wipeout to clear the wrong partition info on both these drives
You see, on the 40 Gb, BIOS and fdisk would show forty, and windows and gdisk showed 20, and neither windows, fdisk nor gdisk showed me the missing twenty.
I did not have a 20 giga laying about.
I explained what was happening to the owner and we decided to connect a used 30 giga (less waste.)
Of course it also became a “twenty”.
I was not happy with this.
I decided to try it the long way (the way HP told to our friend)
I used wipeout, then fdisk, then format, and then recovery with windows only, and this worked. Then I added the bundled software (what is still useful was added, what was useless was not.)
I wrote an explanation so the new owner won’t erroneously waste ten giga, and included these notes with the recovery software.
Lessons learned
The tattoo is in BIOS
The hidden sector was not needed for recovery as long as BIOS is tattood.
Tattoo can be erased/added.
The box still had win98se sticker, the XPhome sticker came off.
The guy who had put that forty in and loaded XP home to install it, used more sense than I did I guess.
He sure wasted less time on it.
latest edit
may 11, 2006