My HP Pavillion desktop (model a6110n), with some sort of 32-bit Vista installed, boots to a blue screen that asks me if I want to go to setup or press <F11> for recovery options. Pressing <F11> takes me to a screen that has me specify an English keyboard, then something about get drivers, then to the System Recovery Options screen. Here, the options are "startup recovery" (which, when entered, will seemingly run for days with the blue bar going across the screen), command prompt, system recovery, and a couple of more choices.
Naturally, foolish me, I did not make up any recovery disks when I received the machine, nor are my data backups current.
The helpful online tech support at HP said that I want to choose system recovery, and pointed me to an article on how to go about it. However, unlike as written in the article, clicking "next" on System Recovery does not give me a "backup" option. Rather, it warns about erasing everything on the disk.
So, what can I do? Can I get data via the command prompt? (If so, it must be non-obvious, as none of the directories or files in them look familiar.)
I can order disks from HP. Will they help, or is there something else I should be trying?
Thanks!