I have been trying to run the HP system recovery disks to reformat & recover a computer for my cousin. Each time I attempt this, it stalls out while INFLATING files in windows/options/sbsi/....~.wav and I receive an error message stating abort, retry, or fail...I have worked with HP customer care on this ISSUE and am back at square one...anyone have any suggestions? Please and Thanks "Abort retry or fail?" is the message that comes up when the system has detected that it could not read data from a DISK. Are these floppy disks? Whatever, the message means "damaged disk". When you say that you have worked with HP customer care on this, what did you mean exactly? I would imagine that a system that came with Windows ME must be at least 5 or 6 YEARS OLD, if not more, and I would not be surprised if HP are not interested. If the machine in question is not the one that the disks came with, I would be even less surprised.

Your cousin will need to examine his or her options. These may include purchasing a Windows ME install CD on Ebay (or getting one in some other way that we cannot discuss here.)