Code Purple — The Compaq/HP Booby Trap
January 4th, 2006 by adminGod blessed us all again this year with the presence of family over the Christmas holiday, but the joy was tempered by some annoyance. My brother-in-law brought his desktop computer down for me to work on. In addition to upgrading some hardware, he complained that the machine had slowed down, was acting funny, etc. Of course he was running Windows XP.
Swapping out the hardware was easy. The damage left by untold viruses/malware was a bit more difficult. I told him that I could try to clean things up as much as I could, but the only way to make sure that he was clean would be to restore the system from scratch. I told him there was always a little effort involved in restoring a system — mostly from having to reinstall all the software he had put on — but it was probably the best way to go. He agreed.
So, I created the restore disks (HP and Compaq computers apparently do not ship with restore disks on board, but instead have a separate partition from which the user must burn the disks). I did a full restore, reformatting the hard drive and reinstalling Windows XP. Everything went like clockwork…
Until I rebooted the machine. Then I got an error that there was a “Configuration error” and that I should call “Customer Care” with “Error Code Purple.” T that point, I could only power off the machine.
What in the world was “Error Code Purple,” I wondered. A quick search on the net revealed that this was a booby trap placed in HP and Compaq computers in which a “tattoo” or numerical signature of the motherboard and hardware configuration is created at the factory and encoded into the restore disks on a particular computer. When you re-install your system, it checks to make sure the system has not been modified. If you have modified your system, the “tattoo” generated by the checking program will be different than the original, and the system will not boot.
In order to fix this, you have to send in your computer to Compaq, or take it so some place like CompUSA or BestBuy where they will modify the “tattoo” so you can run your software on your computer again — until the next time you upgrade memory or swap a card or DVD player.
For a fee, of course.
I will post a couple of fixes for this below. But first — I have to vent. I cannot believe that a company would pull such an anti-consumer action as to booby trap its machines so that you can’t reinstall the OS after changing the hardware configuration unless you pay them a fee. One forum on the net said HP wanted to charge him over a hundred bucks for the privilege. This is obscene.
The funny thing is that I originally assumed it was some stupid thing with Windows XP. I have long been used to finding out idiotic anti-consumer “features” in Windows XP — which is why I run Linux on all of my boxes. I am flabbergasted that a company would decide that Windows is not anti-consumer enough, so they needed to make things even less convenient.
People should not buy HP or Compaq products as long as this policy is in place. This is inexcusable. And it ate up most of an afternoon that I should have been spending with family rather than trying to hack my way into a box before the family left.
So, here’s a couple of fixes for you folk who are burdened with an HP or Compaq computer and end up having to reinstall the OS after making a hardware change.
The underlying problem is that there is a .bat file that calls a python script to check the tattoo upon boot up. If you remove that call, then there is no check and the machine boots up just fine.
The file is:
C:\hp\bin\CheckConfig\cfgchk.bat
UPDATE: A reader whose comments were deleted in my server crash noted that the file should really be:
C:\hp\bin\ConfigCheck\cfgchk.bat
(e.g. switch CheckConfig with ConfigCheck)
UPDATE2: A reader (see comment #23 by Nitrazepam) has found a similar solution for Vista, where the offending passages seem to be in the C:\hp\bin\CheckDMI folder. I don’t run Windows on any of my boxes — I stumbled on this thing working on my brother-in-law’s box when it broke — I don’t have any idea about changes associated with Vista. Thanks, Nitrazepam!!!
UPDATE2.5: See also comment 104. A couple of people seem to have found this to be even easier. Thanks, Red Dragon!
UPDATE3: Reader Chris Smiddy (comment 128) suggests an even easer fix for Vista. I don’t run Vista on any of my boxes, so I can’t test it, but it seems too easy not to try… Thanks, Chris!!!
UPDATE4: Claudio (comment 130) notes that this is a “hidden” directory and/or file, so you have to be showing hidden stuff if you are using a Windoze recovery disk.
The solution is to get a boot disk that will allow you to edit the hard drive and clear that file. I just deleted everything in cfgchk.bat and left an empty file with that name.A Windows solution was provided by “Alecstar” at geek.com. The discussion can also be seen on the usenet newsgroup alt.comp.hardware.pc-homebuilt. It is to either get the commercial Windows Preinstallation Evironment, a minimal bootable OS that allows you to run from CD (which, of course, Microsoft will not sell to mere consumers), or make one using BartPE. This will allow you to edit the hard drive directly. Go to the cfgchk.bat file, edit it, save the empty file, and reboot.
I have never been able to successfully build a BartPE disk, mostly because the Windows disks I have never seem to be compatible with the ones BartPE requires — I have too old a version, the wrong service pack, etc. It’s too much of a hassle for me, but if you are a Windows person, go for it.
A much simpler (for me) Linux solution is to get a bootable mini-distro that has Captive-NTFS (which allows writing to NTFS disks) on it, and edit the file that way. Sources on the net wrote that Knoppix had Captive-NTFS in its Utilities, but when I downloaded the most recent stable Knoppix, it was not there. Instead, there was a note that there was an experimental NTFS writable system on the DVD, which I didn’t have time to download. Instead, I found a *wonderful* boot disk called the “Ultimate Boot Disk.” It comes in two forms — Basic and Full. The “Full” version contains a stripped down Knoppix with Captive-NTFS that allowed me to easily access the hard drive and empty cfgchk.bat. NOTE — SEE UPDATE BELOW.
UPDATE6: Captive-NTFS is no longer maintained, and is probably unnecessary. Just about all of the newer distros I’ve looked at can read and write to NTFS drives. LINUX advances on. I know that both SUSE and Mandriva distros do well at reading and writing to NTFS drives, and I assume (but haven’t tested) Ubuntu. So any of the live distros of these should work, such as Mandriva One.
UPDATE7: See Jill’s comment #98 — there have now been a couple folk who have followed her directions using the Ultimate Boot CD. Thanks, Jill!
UPDATE 8: “helpful” in comment 166 has a solution without a bootable disk, but with an intact recovery partition (for Vista, I presume). Thanks, “helpful”!
So that’s it — download a boot disk, edit the file, and reboot.
And, as Alecstar noted, never buy a Compaq or HP box again.
Posted in Computer stuff | 234 Comments »
January 4th, 2006 at 1:24 pm
I wonder if this would qualify as spyware under federal laws. Secretly installed and attempts extortion.
I’ve never been tempted to buy a Compaq after working in a store that sold them.
January 4th, 2006 at 1:36 pm
Hi, Rick. Hope you had a good Christmas!
Who knows — the line between spyware and digital rights management seems to be in the eye of the beholder.
January 5th, 2006 at 10:49 am
I was about to tell you that my son (also) works in a store which sells Compaq and he advisesd us to “never buy a Compaq” – too many problems. Alas, Rick beat me to it.
Always good to have two confirmation sources when “reporting”.
January 17th, 2006 at 1:19 am
My story went the same way. Before I found your blog I was headed to the BBB to discuss this practice by HP/Compaq. I would just like to reiterate. Avoid HP/Compaq.
May 6th, 2007 at 10:34 pm
Well, I hope this is still of use. I apologize to all the folks whose comments were lost when my server went down.
May 19th, 2007 at 3:32 pm
Thank you for this post. My friend had this problem with his HP desktop, and when he called HP with the code Purple, they told him it was his MotherBoard. I knew from previous diagnostics that this was not the case. After making the change above, I was able to get to the Windows login screen, and it has been running fine.
July 8th, 2007 at 8:52 am
Thanks a lot.
You saved my day.
Wish you all the best in your life.
July 16th, 2007 at 8:37 am
Sheesh. I thought Packard Bell was the worst computer out there. I guess HP is trying to deprive PB of its first place. Thanks a lot for the post. I work at a computer store and a client came in with this error… Reading this post saved me an hour or two of work.
August 28th, 2007 at 9:17 pm
thanks for your cooperation, it works fine for me, thanks very much
September 15th, 2007 at 7:20 pm
C:\hp\bin\ConfigCheck\cfgchk.bat
I have a Compaq Presario V5000 V5305WM.
I bought it Nov. 2006.
Looking in the C:\hp\bin\ directory there are NO SUBDIRECTORIES no matter what name and yes I checked for hidden/system sub directories.
Obviously HP/ComPaq have moved the files/directories. Any suggestions?
September 15th, 2007 at 10:29 pm
Looking in the C:\hp\bin\ directory there are NO SUBDIRECTORIES no matter what name…
Is this XP or Vista? I haven’t looked at a Vista box.
September 16th, 2007 at 2:02 am
One other thing — are you getting a code purple error? As I remember, the ConfigCheck directory is deleted some time after the check during the initial startup. It could be that your error occurs after that point..
September 20th, 2007 at 12:10 am
i have tried everything, where in the ubcd do i find the directory to delete C:\hp\bin\ConfigCheck\cfgchk.bat
file. i havent found the knoppix program
September 27th, 2007 at 8:40 am
how do you fix this problem if you do not have the boot disks?
September 27th, 2007 at 5:59 pm
You can’t use the method I described without a boot disk. But, in fact, since this was originally written, there are a zillion new live-CD versions of linux out there,, and most new versions of linux. Most support ntfscp or equivalent, which would at least let you overwrite the bat file…
October 2nd, 2007 at 9:46 pm
I encountered the same problem with my HP after running system restore last week.
This post helped me solve my problem since I knew which file to remove (
) thank you! ). I downloaded Bart PE, but couldn’t use it because I didn’t have a Windows disk, then I downloaded Ultimate Boot CD but it was too confusing for me since I didn’t quite understand how to get to Drive C and edit it….
Finally I downloaded KNOPPIX 5 and after spending a while trying to make the hard drive writeable, Mr. Knopper himself wrote me and explained to me how to do that on a corrupt filesystem…. He is very helpful and once I deleted the file my system worked again… this is a 2003 HP so my system had the cfgchk.bat file. Hopefully there’s an equivalent for it on later systems (does anyone know what it is?).
October 2nd, 2007 at 9:58 pm
barriaga8 …
If you are using UBCD you are supposed to go to
1)Filesystem Tools
2)NTFS Tools
3)Avira NTFS4DOS Personal V1.9
This should give you read/write access to NTFS filesystems. But I wasn’t able to actually write to my hard drive using this…maybe if I researched it more…
Knoppix 5 is much easier for regular people, very user-friendly. It’s not very difficult to edit your hard drive with it. And it can function as a computer if your system crashes. You can use it for internet, documents, configure a printer, etc.
October 11th, 2007 at 3:24 pm
hi, further to reading up on code purple and nowhere near understanding it, i still have a warranty on the machine and have a service call tomorrow, i’m assuming he will “replace” the mb..
my question is when he puts in the new mb will that be tattood or will he fit a compattable one?
October 12th, 2007 at 8:14 pm
My understanding (but remember, I’m a linux guy, not a Windoze guy — I just wrote this when I fixed my brother-in-laws box) is that each motherboard has a unique tattoo. If you have customer service swap motherboards, they should also fix the OS to recognize the new tattoo.
October 22nd, 2007 at 7:10 pm
I got the code purple blues too.
I read your fix but those directories and files were not on my computer.
I have presario sr1010nx.
I started looking around for unusual bat or config files.
I found a directory sysprep and a file oobe.bat.
hey no harm. it don’t work anyway.
so i deleated it and now it works. You gave me the idea to look so thanks! danny
October 26th, 2007 at 8:06 pm
Ok, I have tried to use ubcd to locate the conf file and delete it. The only directory I access when getting the c: prompt is hp_recovery. There is not config file to be found and when I do try to open any file that remotely looks like a config file, it’s blank. Any ideas on how to find the directory I need to find?
October 27th, 2007 at 6:51 am
On the topic of Hp Products….
I currently work as a phone tech for HP/Compaq. I would like to thank this forum for en-lightening me to some facts about the system. We were told if someone calls in with said Code Purple, it was an automatic transfer to our hardware specialist team, to set up the customer for a new system. Even if out of warrenty. Unfortunately for me, as someone who does care, I am not allowed to use my personal experience (since the days of the Commodore Vic 20 – and onward) to assist my customers. Instead, we are given about a 1 on a scale of 10 to use our brains. Most of the time, as you all have encountered, it sounds like we’re reading from a script. Truth is, we are. They’ve taken the top 10 methods to fix a particular problem, and bundled them for us to regurgatate to you. If they don’t work it’s off to full system recovery land, or set up for service. As for the Code Purple, it happens on any system. I have friends who worked at Dell, Acer, Apple, and the new Lenova which is re-introducing IBM soon. All have the same hand-cuffs at their respective companies. It’s Microsoft that dictates the rules of engagement here. Not the computer companies. That’s why we’re stuck with Vista now on all new machines. Biggest money maker gets to put their toys on to a machine. That’s why we got stuck with Vista, and the TRIAL versions of Microsoft Office, Norton Anti-virus, and AOL. Repeat TRIAL VERISIONS. As for the recovery cd’s, you make your own to match ONLY your system. That way, one set doesn’t fix 20 or more systems like the days of old. Yes, it’s a money thing yet again. I’ll more than likely lose my job for having said that, but I’d rather see the public informed rather than get financialy raped. Thanks again for the Code Purple fix. I’ll pass it along as much as I can before they get rid of me.
Sincerely
DaMoose
October 30th, 2007 at 1:54 pm
Working on PC Tech service i found a Compaq with Vista Preinstalled PC that shows the “Code Purple” Error.
The Solution that worked fine is the following:
1.- Do a complete recovery using recovery partition or the Recovery DVD’s/CD’s
2.- At the first restart after copy process is done, use a MiniPe CD or enter a BootCD to Load Dos or some Environment with ntfs Support, and some app to edit textfiles.
3.- Get into C:\hp\bin\CheckDMI folder
4.- Open CheckDMI.cmd File with a textfile editing app
5.- Look for this Commented Green Lineslines:
if ERRORLEVEL 1 goto mismatch
goto cleanup
This code is the end of DMI Compare routine, if DMIdata is not correct then tou get purple code error, triggering “mismatch” routine; if data is correct, then trigger “cleanup” routine that is needed to avoid purple Code error Code
REM ——————————————————————
REM Found discrepancy in the DMI. Notify the user with the localize
REM message via lg.ini, then shut down the system immediately.
REM ——————————————————————
:mismatch
echo – Mismatched DMI – >c:\hp\support\CodePurple.log
echo DMI from Master UUT: >>c:\hp\support\CodePurple.log
type DMIinfo.ini >>c:\hp\support\CodePurple.log
echo ———————————————- >>c:\hp\support\CodePurple.log
echo DMI from This UUT: >>c:\hp\support\CodePurple.log
type DMIofUUT.ini >>c:\hp\support\CodePurple.log
echo ———————————————- >>c:\hp\support\CodePurple.log
del DMIinfo.ini DMIofUUT.ini
start /w c:\hp\bin\MsgAction.exe “%title%: %message%”
shutdown.exe /s /t 0
goto end
REM —————————————————————–
REM Found all matching DMI flags. Clean up before exiting.
REM —————————————————————–
:cleanup
cd..
if exist c:\hp\support\CodePurple.log del c:\hp\support\CodePurple.log /q
if exist c:\hp\bin\CheckDMI rd c:\hp\bin\CheckDMI /s /q
6.- Solution is cheating code and invoking Cleanup even if DMI is not correct.
if ERRORLEVEL 1 goto cleanup
goto cleanup
7.- Save and reboot.
The code in CheckDMI.cmd file is commented from hp/compact, and is insteresting cause u can get new forms to avoid Purple Code using this information.
i hope this info help u.
October 30th, 2007 at 4:21 pm
Thank you all for the info. My HP Pavilion’s faulty motherboard was replaced by HP. I tried full system recovery and hit this code purple. Tried calling hp customer care but they where off for the day. I am not the type who waits till they wake up. Thanks to the info here, my system is now running.
A Few issues though: The linux distros that are available on ubcd do not seem to have NTFS support.
Avira utility did the job but dir crashed the system throwing a div by zero error.
I used copy con to overwrite the file and it worked.
Thankx again.
October 30th, 2007 at 9:50 pm
Thanks all, for these comments. It was a sadness that I lost many of the excellent earlier comments when my server crashed.
The bottom line is that I’m a Linux guy, and found this solution when my brother-in-law had problems on his box. Accordingly, I don’t have a clue about newer changes, if any, with Vista boxes, etc. I really appreciate the comments that folk are making to keep this post up to date.
October 30th, 2007 at 10:03 pm
Lakshmi,
Many of the distros that don’t have Captive-NTFS instead have a separate action for manipulating ntfs files. For instance, Mandrake (which is what I use) has utilities like “ntfscp” for copying ntfs files, “ntfscat,” etc. You might look at them.
October 31st, 2007 at 4:19 pm
Easy way to get NTFS access is to “locate” an ERD Commander Boot Disk. ERD Commander was a product of Winternals. Those boys were so sick, Micro$oft bought Winternals to shut them up.
November 2nd, 2007 at 12:53 am
Hi,
I am not the computer pros that most of you are but a friend of mine had the Code Purple pop up on her Compaq for apparently no reason at all. No upgrades -etc. Anyway, after reading all of your helpfull info I removed her hard drive and set the jumpers as a slave and installed it temporaily in my computer and opened the HP folder and removed the file folders in the bin/configcheck folder. But it back in her computer and on we go….. Thanks so much for the help and info.
November 6th, 2007 at 7:38 pm
OK, I’m ready to try this. I have Windows XP Home Edition and I am getting the code purple (configuration error message), but because I can not go any further and can not actually do anything except shutdown, how do I delete cfgchk.bat from c:\hp\bin\ConfigCheck\ (or CheckConfig, whatever)?
November 18th, 2007 at 5:04 pm
Confused,
You will need to get a bootable CD as described above and boot the machine using that OS. Then you will be able to muck with the disk drive with wild abandon using the tools described in the post and/or the comments.
November 19th, 2007 at 9:46 pm
I am still slightly confused. I can get to the C:\ by hitting f10 during the boot process and then hitting CTRL D once in the recovery screen. I have searched everywhere and can not find hp\bin subdirectory. I only have a recovery dir under the hp. I did a dir *.py /s which supposedly will search all directories ad subdirectories under the c:. Finds nothing. I did do a MCE2005 upgrade that HP offered for a short time = does that make any difference.
I spent the $20 for the recovery disks a year or so ago, but they are not recognized anymore. Maybe upgrading to the MCE 2005 made then not useable.
Anyway, can anybody offer any help.
November 20th, 2007 at 9:57 am
I think the problem is that you are trying to do this with the recovery disk. The recovery disk is good for re-installing the OS, but is probably not all that good for doing what is described here.
Instead, after re-installing the OS, boot using a CD-based OS — either a Linux distro or one of the bootable Micro$oft things others have mentioned.
Note that the C: drive on your computer will then have to be mounted as something else — /mnt/windows or something in Linux, or some other volume in Windows. It will not actually be C: when you boot in the live distro.
Once again, I’m not a Windows person, but if it’s anything like Linux, if you boot using one of these bootable CDs, it will load a virtual C: volume into memory, and when you go to C:, you will be going to the C: volume of the bootable OS, not the C: volume of your original computer.
November 28th, 2007 at 8:23 pm
hi ,
we gotten a code purple too after restore on a a335w twice,called HP, said the motherboard was dead, i told her that it was working fine before, then she said it had to be ‘tatooed’ , i told her ill get back to the HP girl later when i figured what to do,
looking in on google,found yuo guys too, i figured the best way was to install a fresh new windows XP, we went to Staples and got the xp upgrade,( i had the 98 cd to be the back up when doing the clean install )using my windows 98 boot i fdisk and deleted that restore partion and the NTFS partion part, and then created the whole harddrive as a partion, reset computer then formated c: from the 98 boot still in it,,
after all that, a fresh install via boot from cd,,
and this computer works great! seeming better and faster then before!
i guess the money we spend on a new XP cd , we could have gotton a Vista, but im not ready to take it on becouse of the mostly negitive stuff i heard about it,
G
maybe doing all this would be better in the long run, saving time and maybe money instead from having somebody “repair” your computer,
November 28th, 2007 at 11:48 pm
HI again
funny to reread what i wrote early, don’t think my english teachers would have loved all that,
anyway was going to mention that the drivers came from the HP website and they work great, but im now little uncomfortable to download any other stuff from them,
G
December 18th, 2007 at 12:13 am
Hi – I got my first code purple last week after trying to recover the system following a virus. HP would not even talk to us since our warranty had expired and I was not willing to pay to renew it before even discussing the problem. We had added a memory card when we first bought the Pavilion Slimliine about a year ago. My question is, do I need to remove that card before going through the boot disk exercise? Thanks!
December 20th, 2007 at 10:46 am
If you use the method described above, then you do not need to remove your card.
Of course, if it doesn’t work, take it out and see what happens
December 21st, 2007 at 8:49 pm
hey got code purple I have windows xp and I can’t get passed the screen because it saya to shut the computer down what can i do to fix this problem is there anything i can do using using anyone of the F keys like F1 f!0 or something like that
December 25th, 2007 at 1:58 pm
Mmmm. We have 2 HP laptops & never had a HP problem (Vista problems, of course)
As far as customer service, you can’t expect a good computer person to work 1st level customer support for low pay (why do you think they outsource to India) which is why they work from canned scripts and usually don’t know anything.
(Full Disclosure: I’m a former HP employee from one of their Unix labs. Now I work with a bunch of computer illiterate programmers and wish I was back at HP)
December 25th, 2007 at 8:31 pm
Just a thought. If a computer is giving the code purple error couln’t I fix it by running a windows repair install using another (generic or Dell) OEM cd?
December 27th, 2007 at 12:20 am
kesha:
Not really. But it is not clear from your post that you actually have the problem this post is designed to fix.
December 27th, 2007 at 12:23 am
Mike:
I doubt it. Most of the OEM disks will not easily work on hardware other than that they were designed for. It’s been years since I’ve played with it, though, so I could be wrong. When I played with it, you had to figure out a way to disable the checking software that made sure you were installing on the “right” machine. If you have a retail version of the OS, then you could probably just install it then and there — though you would have to track down the right drivers.
However, once again, I’m a linux person, who just fixed his brother-in-law’s machine. I’m not a Windoze expert.
December 27th, 2007 at 12:25 am
Bill:
“mmm. We have 2 HP laptops & never had a HP problem ”
Heh. I guess it’s a little like a quote I once saw attributed to an official from Singapore, who said “In Singapore we have freedom of speech. People have the right to say whatever they want, as long as they want to say the right thing.”
Maybe using HP computers is the same way.
December 29th, 2007 at 2:34 am
Trying to work my way through a problem with corrupted microsoft .net.framework software after replacing my hp mobo with a different model. MS knowledge base solutions haven’t worked. Restore disks won’t work for me either. Found 3 files on my xp/mce 2005 system with similar tattoo info – c\hp\bin\ HWD.INI, BS.INI, EISHWD.INI. also, kbdcfg.bat file has a STOP command, don’t understand the code yet…
January 13th, 2008 at 12:01 am
Interesting! I got Code Purple while trying to “recover” a friend’s HP. I was using my own monitor, Kb and mouse – would these small hardware changes alone have been enough to cause the error?
February 1st, 2008 at 2:03 am
If you get a code purple take your hard drive out put into another pc as a second drive go into the drive and click on folders in this order hp bin configcheck untill you come to run.py right click on that folder rename the folder run._p then save it put back into your pc and start up this take’s care of code purple and prevent HP’s booby trap it took me a day to get it figured out.
March 6th, 2008 at 7:43 pm
Deleted the file C:\hp\bin\CheckConfig\cfgchk.bat like you said and worked great, Thanks, A+++.
March 13th, 2008 at 2:55 pm
Would i still have this same issue if i were to install the os from the backup cds?
Considering that i dont take out that cfgchk.bat file.
The problem is that i dont have a way of burning a portable boot cd..So im just trying to solve it without deleting the file….
March 13th, 2008 at 9:49 pm
I don’t think so. You have to be able to get access to that particular file before it gets invoked. The only way I know how to do it is to not be using that drive for boot up.
If you can’t burn your own cd, then buy one. If you can handle linux, there are a zillion live cd’s you can get cheap. For instance, go to http://www.linuxcd.org, you can buy one for less than two bucks.
March 16th, 2008 at 4:32 pm
Hi… i was able to get the cd… it ran…
so iwent to
1)Filesystem Tools
2)NTFS Tools
3)Avira NTFS4DOS
but it doesnt let me edit or write
what should i do?
any tips?
email ranma_02@hotmail.com
or just post here..thanks =)
March 21st, 2008 at 6:43 am
hi, was wondering if this would happen to hp laptops too ??? or just desktops ??
March 28th, 2008 at 1:40 pm
Jonathan — which cd did you use?
Edwin — Don’t know. I’ve never tried to switch hardware on an hp laptop. I *assume* that they are tattooed also, but really don’t know.
April 7th, 2008 at 7:01 pm
um i got code purple 3 moths ago i got code purple i have a hp media center m000 and know when i turn it on it says cpu failure and shuts dowm hat can i use linux and erae or what pllzz help(i know my cpu works tried on ther pc)
April 7th, 2008 at 7:04 pm
sorry for double post but i mean
i got code purple 3 moths ago and i have a hp media center m000 ( windows 20004 )and know when i turn it on it says cpu failure and shuts dowm what can i use should i use linux and erase or what pllzz help(i know my cpu works tried on ther pc)
April 7th, 2008 at 7:50 pm
it says cpu fan failed sorry
April 8th, 2008 at 2:26 pm
Heh. Well, that will slow things down, too. I remember working on a box once where I had taken the shell off and had replaced a drive. I turned on the box to see if the drive would power up, and it burst into smoke — I had left a screw sitting on the motherboard and shorted out the system.
April 9th, 2008 at 11:35 pm
I ran into this CODE PURPLE yesterday while recovering and cleaning-up my dads PC. After looking for a solution I tried something totally different, and tried to use my old recovery cd’s from a different computer, a laptop actually, and it ran all 4 then gave me the expected error that what I was trying to do was basically insane. However, when I ran the restore cd’s for the PC again (the ones for the PC) I was able to restore fine. Now, my question is; Did me using different restore cd’s somehow overwrite files or delete files and then allow me to recover when I went back and used the ones for the PC? It’s just strange that I had the code purple then was able to recover from it. *confused*
April 10th, 2008 at 3:22 am
i booted my machine from knoppix.
I foung the configcheck file.
I can’t modify the content of the file.
The message that comes up is” u might not have the right permissions, or not enough space in the disk”
I have cheked permision and i have read and write permissions.
Do u have any idea, on what should i do?
thanks!
GS
April 12th, 2008 at 4:40 am
first off, thanks so much for this blog on the code purple. helped me out numerous times on multiple computers.
however, i seem to have a problem this time around. i did another system recovery ( i’ve started doing them periodically now, i find my computer stays quite a bit faster that way) and it’s plunged back into the code purple fiasco, and the usually way of fixing it, which i’ve done many times ( putting it into another computer and deleting the line) crashed my other 2 computers, neither of which were compaq.
suggestions?
both of my other computers are practically dead, nothing will boot on them, even when i try and run ubuntu live cd it doesn’t allow it. (yes i have it allowed in bios)
April 12th, 2008 at 4:47 am
oh, sorry about the double – post, but for omar, if it says cpu fan failed, it means the fan that cools the cpu (the “core” of the computer) and you’ll have to replace it. first though i’d see if it’s just unplugged, since for most motherboards’ bios they check for the presence of a fan, and if it’s not there they will shut down to save the processor. if it’s plugged in, turn on the p.c. with the side of the computer off, and see if the fan on the motherboard is spinning. if not, it’s dead. new ones cost like 2 or 3 bucks, you can get em with cool leds or just plain jane black.
April 13th, 2008 at 11:46 pm
ronfin:
Actually, your experience makes sense. My information is that the tattoo number is encoded in the rescue disk somewhere, so the fact that the original rescue disk worked and another did not.
gs:
Are you sure you are using the commands for modifying ntfs filesystem? The straight “cp’ and “mv” commands won’t work. You have to use the commands for modifying NTFS. I don’t know what they are in the new knoppix disks. On my Mandriva systems, it is “ntfscp”, “ntfsclone”, “ntfscat” etc.
travis d:
I don’t know. I’ve only worked this on HP/Compaq boxes. Sorry. Hope a reader knows…
April 25th, 2008 at 3:23 am
I woul have never thought that Compac and HP would be such a$$’$ i mean realy WE are paying them for there stuff they have no right.
And btw thanks for the help its done alot for me.
April 26th, 2008 at 4:03 am
HELP !!! I cannot find the ConfigCheck folder using Avira Ntfs4dos . I used TestDisk in the UBCD to search for the run.py and the cfgchk.bat files and it was found along with the ConfigCheck folder. But when I use Avira to del run.py or overwrite cfgchk.bat, it always says unable to open file.I have tried deleting other things in the drive and it worked , so I do not know why I cannot find the run.py file or the cfgchk.bat. Please help me !!!
April 28th, 2008 at 10:23 am
Okay I think the file is found in Avira NTFS4DOS , just that the file cannot be opened. Is it because that another program is running it? Or I don’t have access to the folder or file? HELP ME !!My parents are going to send the computer for retatoo-ing, like the HP guy told them to =[ and it costs like 100 to 200 bucks fix it.I hope somebody can reply me soon to help me fix the problem. I tried my best to find out how to fix the CODE PURPLE , thinking of this really makes my blood boil. HOW IN THE WORLD CAN HP DO THIS TO ME ! OR EVERYONE ELSE ! Anyway, somebody please help my situation. I tried Knoppix 5.1.1 but I had difficulty deleting the cfgchk.bat file as I had some write permission problems, anyway I heard that using a Linux to write to a NTFS disk is very unsafe , so I gave up using Knoppix.I wonder if there are any Live CDs for NTFS disks? Please help me, it is really humiliating to see the cfgchk.bat file in front of me, but I cannot do anything to empty it and safe my computer... Thanks for your help =]
May 16th, 2008 at 5:14 pm
Hi guys, im a case manager from hp and i know the code purple thing is difficult. For some of the questions….using a different keyboard/mouse/monitor should not effect it at all, unless it was a usb keyboard/mouse. The standard way of doing a recovery is unplugging everything except monitor keyboard and mouse. Removing third party hardware is also a good idea before doing the recovery. Its honestly not that common an issue for recoveries and restores to get code purple (without hardware changes), just very unlucky.
May 19th, 2008 at 7:32 am
system configuration error fount in my hp a1320in midcenter
pc i hve try del c:\hp\bin\configcheck
but not folder found hp\bin in c drive help me
May 21st, 2008 at 6:53 pm
Hey thanks alot this was real helpful. I have been working on this system for the last two days trying to get around this thing. Too bad I didnt find you sooner would have saved alot of hassle.
May 25th, 2008 at 8:10 pm
Big D: “not that common…”
Well, maybe not for you, but this one page makes up 70% of my traffic. Your company’s little booby trap is a huge problem for those of us who suffer because of it. As an aside, “removing all third party hardware” is not really an option when you’ve replaced a crashed hard drive. Doh. You should not have to disassemble your machine in order to boot it.
You really don’t to anybody any favors by hiding your head in the sand about this. A better solution than denial would be to stop booby trapping your machines.
May 30th, 2008 at 3:12 pm
Do you have to delete C:\hp\bin\CheckConfig\cfgchk.bat
or do you have to edit it?
And if I do edit it, what do I edit?
May 30th, 2008 at 9:09 pm
fatguy:
If you are running XP, you can do either. I just delete it. Before my server went down and I lost all my original comments, a reader recognized that there is just one line that has to be removed — I think it called a python script, but I don’t remember. Since deleting it works just as well, I say do the simple thing. But once again, I’m a Linux guy, so what do I know.
See comment 23 by Nitrazepam if you have Vista.
June 1st, 2008 at 6:54 pm
My computer does not have the configcheck file anywhere, only hp\bin with lots of stuff in it, but none of the files mentioned here. Is there any other way around this?
June 9th, 2008 at 1:18 pm
hi im running vista home premium i recieved this code purple error when trying to boot up after changing my mother board its very simple to fix instead of going to bin and stuff (folders) just delte the entire python folder i was worried about doing so but i gave up after not finding checkdmi so i delted the python folder then switched back to my new mobo and it runs great, NOTE:: u must have the default mobo that came with the pc to do so,
best of luck Tim
June 9th, 2008 at 3:04 pm
I’m not sure what deleting the “python directory” means — once again, I’m a Linux guy, not a Windoze guy — but I hope you don’t mean disabling python altogether. That may have some unintended consequences…
June 11th, 2008 at 6:35 pm
I wish I could have found this site sooner. My friend has a HP Pavillion a330n, she had a hal.dll error, so I put in my XP cd, ran f /chkdsk command, did not work then i rebuild the boot.ini file, and it went through, I noticed that it took like 30 minutes to get to the XP login screen and then i got the code purple crap, it reinstalled windows without ever prompting anything. So jsut to add to this Booby trap crap, in my case u didn’t have to reinstall XP for the stupid python crap to work. I hate HP now..But thanks for posting the solutions, it worked for me
Can anyone recommend any good recovery programs?
June 12th, 2008 at 5:52 pm
Awsome, Reloaded XP Media Center on an HP desktop. Got the Code Purple. Called HP, they wanted me to send it back.
Found this site, removed the drive and attached it to my handy dandy “IDE/SATA -> USB” device, deleted the file, works like a charm.
Thanks
June 13th, 2008 at 12:05 am
I have experienced similar amount of frustration with my sony recovery cd when original mobo died . then i didnt know about all the tricks they use on average consumer . since i am using generic pc and or refurbished server since they seem to be os- flexible . for last year i have been using pclinux full time and i do not think i will ever go back to brand name pc or m$ os . all is good now ! thanks for your info !
June 19th, 2008 at 11:30 am
Greetings, i found this posting really helpfull, i got the system up and running with trinity linux-boot cd, couple tips, to mount writable ntfs use command mountallfs -g
Another tip, if you are missing hp\bin or the cfgchk.bat file, check the mounted filesystems if you are on the right drive (hda0, hda1, s0 etc…), there might be couple of them, remember the install drive and the C drive, they both have similar filesystem on recovery stage.
June 28th, 2008 at 10:03 pm
Comment #23 seems to be working
July 8th, 2008 at 5:52 pm
Dude, just clean the HDD out completely. Find your drivers, save em, find any full version of an OS and make sure you have your product key,and delete ALL partitions and reformat the HDD. If you delete all the partitions you delete that garbage ‘tatoo’as well.
July 8th, 2008 at 6:22 pm
Dude, a legal off-the-shelf copy of Windows XP or Vista isn’t all that cheap. By “any full version” I assume you don’t mean a pirated version, eh?
The bottom line is that I don’t think it’s a good idea to propose deleting a legal version of the OS and installing an illegal one as a solution to the problem.
Of course, *my* solution is to avoid Windows altogether. Why deal with issues of piracy when there is a wonderful, free OS available like Linux?
The first thing I do when I get a new box is reformat the HD and install a *real* operating system, and that avoids the HP tattoo problem legally.
The funniest thing about my blog, in fact, is that this post about fixing a box that doesn’t belong to me running an OS I don’t use is the post that gets the most traffic.
July 9th, 2008 at 3:23 am
I have a s3400f HP Pavilion Slimline PC and haven’t been able to find any of the files detailed here. Perhaps HP has made this more difficult with some of their new machines? I am tempted to try to just delete the Python Folder to see if that works.
July 9th, 2008 at 3:24 am
Forgot to mention that I have Vista Home Premium 32-bit
July 9th, 2008 at 9:57 am
Did you try the method in comment #23? That seems to be the one for Vista…
July 9th, 2008 at 12:40 pm
I’m not able to find…
“Get into C:\hp\bin\CheckDMI folder”
I have show system and hidden files so I’m thinking that the newer PCs are using a different structure.
July 9th, 2008 at 1:03 pm
“I have show system and hidden files…”
I don’t know, then. But… What you wrote here doesn’t make sense to me. In every recovery I’m familiar with, it’s done using a command-line window, not a GUI tool. Further, you should have booted up using a “live” distro or boot disk, and your hard drive should be mounted not as the “C:” drive, but as a mounted drive.
IF you are really coming up using a live distro or cd-based boot disk, I think the problem may be that you are looking not at the hard drive on the HP box, but instead at the C: drive of the distro.
Remember that when you boot up using a live distro, the “C:” volume may not the hard drive, but either a ram disk or the actual CD. The hard drive of the box will be some other volume when you boot with the live distro, but will be “C:” when you boot up *without* the live distro.
Thus “C:\hp\bin\CheckDMI” may instead be “D:\hp\bin\CheckDMI” or on some other volume when booting using a live distro.
July 11th, 2008 at 5:27 pm
It happened to me last nite.“Configuration error” and that I should call “Customer Care” with “Error Code Purple.” blah blah. How do we get a bootdsk. Any on the intenet. thx.
July 12th, 2008 at 4:45 am
I do not have the “bin”. it seems the bin is missing on my system. help help….C:\hp\bin\CheckConfig\cfgchk.bat
July 12th, 2008 at 11:42 am
The links to sources of boot disks are in the article. In addition, there are numerous sources for cd-based linux distros — see places like http://www.distrowatch.com. I like Mandriva One (www.mandriva.com).
July 23rd, 2008 at 9:30 am
“I do not have the “bin”. it seems the bin is missing on my system. help help….C:\hp\bin\CheckConfig\cfgchk.bat”
I found it under my “d:” drive
August 5th, 2008 at 4:11 pm
kay well i dont really get all these terms and things but my computer keeps coming up with that (code purple) error and i have tried to understand this but its not working.
i have a windows vista OS and i really need to know how to fix it.
i need to know how to get into all those files so i can delete the nessesary command to overlook that “tattoo” thing.
if anybody can please help me my email is snoopyjr16@yahoo.com
August 5th, 2008 at 5:13 pm
Easy Way to fix the c:\hp\bin\checkconfig\cfgchk.bat is to Get [ Download ] A copy of the “UBUNTU Linux Desktop Boot disk” Image and make a Boot CD Ver 8 and use it to boot your HP CPU [ UBUNTU Runs from the CD you make ] and you can use UBUNTU to edit your Bat file.
August 6th, 2008 at 1:36 pm
friendly user:
When I am in UBUNTU I can see the drive called hp pavillion but it won’t let me access it. What should I do?
August 18th, 2008 at 2:38 am
I have gotten a lot of help so far (SLOWLY) over the past about 12 hours, starting trying to fix this last night. . So far I officially figured out how to burn myself a copy of UBCD411.iso. .
I have it runnin on my vista
and I learned to go:
Filesystem tools > NTFS Tools > Avira NTFS4DOS Personal V1.9
This is so far all working for me. . Yet I can only connect to
C:
I’ve typed:
C:\hp\bin\ConfigCheck\cfghck.bat
C:\hp\bin\CheckConfig\cfghck.bat
C:\hp\bin\CheckDMI
I’ve tried all of these bit by bit, this is also my first time basically ever trying to do this
(besides using “run…” to turn off startup programs and/or figure out my ip adress)
I’m a fast learner and everything I’ve tried I’ve done so until it worked, now all I need is to figure out exactly where this code purple tatoo is so I can delete it, I’m running a ‘07 windows vista, for more info for advise PLEASE email me:
L3LACKITTY@aim.com
Ty
August 20th, 2008 at 7:22 am
i had this problem, so how can i solve it without calling HP, without those discs and without other cpu’s? send me solutions here
leodan_978@hotmail.com
August 20th, 2008 at 7:29 am
more notes about my problem
I have an HP Pavilion with win xp, i restore my cpu because had a virus call it Brontok or something; again i need help
August 30th, 2008 at 2:15 pm
please sir tell me that how i format the partition of hard drive from the cd of 98
September 4th, 2008 at 9:16 am
I have the Ultimate Boot Disk. I can get to the command prompt, but I keep getting Bad command or filename after c:\>hp\bin\CheckConfig. What should I be typing after c:\>?
September 18th, 2008 at 4:44 am
To All,
If code purple error…
Just call hp, tell them that system had code purple error( even if system is out of warranty)…ur computer will be picked up for free and will be retatooed…
September 19th, 2008 at 10:35 pm
9/20/2008 Success with “code purple” – editing cfgchk.bat using NTFS4DOS from Ultimate Boot CD
“code purple” error message after reinstall of XP Operating system on HP media center version 2002 with Pentium 4 CPU 2.60 GHz, 2.5 GB of RAM. from Fernswood.
I had purchased the computer in 2004 – I replaced the power supply a year ago. I had a serious crash and needed to reinstall windows per System Recovery as provided by HP. (which puts the operating system, XP, in its own drive D on the computer; System Recovery reformatted C drive and reinstalled Windows XP)
Installation stalled before completion with the “code purple” error message. Chat with HP Support brought two responses: take to authorized dealer for repair or buy a new computer. This computer cost 1200 dollars in 2004: it’s got a lot of power and I really like the Media Center’s Tivo-like qualities. I paid for it, and I paid for the operating system. I also didn’t know what caused the original crash and didn’t want to invest in a new OS, that I shouldn’t have to buy anyway, just to find out that the computer had other problems.
I had an Ubuntu Live CD from 2006 and was able to use the crashed computer to create an Ultimate Boot Disk. (I really enjoyed Ubuntu and will do a dual boot with XP as Ubuntu (I downloaded and burnt the latest version, Heron, to disk) was such fun! It recognized my networked computer in the basement, came loaded with Firefox, GIMP and OpenOffice, burned disks with no problem – amazing! But it could not access the files on the other drives.)
I change the boot sequence in my computer’s BIOS to boot from the DVD drive, with Ultimate Boot CD in that drive. (Write down your changes to BIOS as you’ll be resetting Boot Sequence when you are done.)
I accessed the Avira NTFS4DOS – selected Filesystem Tools from the first UBCD menu, then selected AVIRA NTFS4DOS, and ran it.
This is the sequence – I typed in what is in red:
A:>D: (This changes the drive that is accessible by NTFS4DOS)
D:>cd hp\bin\config~1 (This changes the directory to the folder that contains the file you need to edit, cfgchk.bat)
D:\HP\BIN\CONFIG~1>copy cfgchk.bat C: (This copies the file that needs editing to the HP Recovery partition, which is Fat 32, not NTFS, and will be editable with a DOS command)
PLEASE NOTE – THESE WERE THE DRIVE NUMBERS THAT WORKED FOR ME. DON’T DESPAIR IF YOU TRY TO ACCESS CONFIG~1 AND IT DOESN’T SHOW UP. YOU CAN FIND WHICH DRIVE HAS IT BY SWITCHING FROM DRIVE LETTER TO DRIVE LETTER AND USING THIS COMMAND: “dir/p” This will call up all the files and folders on that drive, one screen at a time (that’s the “/p” part of the command.) Look for the HP directory and replace that drive letter in all the instructions here given for D: I don’t know what to tell you to do if you don’t have a FAT32 drive like the recovery drive on my HP (C: in all my instructions) I know that previous ‘code purple’ repair instructions occasionally mention copying the cfgchk.bat file to a floppy and editing it with wordpad on another computer, but I could not access my floppy drive while NTFS4DOS was running.
At this point you have to leave NTFS4DOS (I’m not adept at DOS, so I just restarted the computer to get back to UBCD’s main menu.) I used another program, Dos Navigator, found under UBCD menu File Tools, and switched to drive C: to find cfgchk.bat and edit it. The editor worked strangely, or I didn’t use it right. I selected (highlighted) cfgchk.bat, typed in edit after the prompt and hit enter. It went to a black screen with a cursor flashing in the corner, but there was no text to edit! But! When I clicked in Help – F1 – and used the “edit another file” command (which I don’t remember) back on the black screen, chgchk.bat would show up at the bottom, and, after I hit enter to choose that, the text showed up!! I deleted everything that was in the file. I saved the changes, and when I returned to the menu page and selected (highlighted) cfgchk.bat, there were 0 bytes in the file. (I think it listed 124 bytes before when the file was highlighted.)
I exited that program (I think again with a restart of the computer) and returned to the NTFS4DOS program.
This time:
A:>D:
D:>cd hp/bin/config~1 ((This changes the drive that is accessible by DOS)
D:>\HP\BIN\CONFIG~1>ren cfgchk.bat cfgchkold.bat (I thought it wise to keep the original file with a name change just in it didn’t work and I’d have to reedit the .bat file line by line.)
D:>C:
C:>copy cfgchk.bat D:\HP\BIN\CONFIG~1 (You have replaced the old cfgchk.bat file with the new, empty cfgchk.bat file!)
Remove any and all disks from your drives; restart your computer and enter BIOS to change your Boot Drive sequence back to it’s original setting. (You did write it down, didn’t you???)
And . . . The Operating System, in my case, XP, will open and you can continue setting it up. Although . . . it was interesting to see that I couldn’t create more Recovery Disks (it said I had already made a set – I probably did, I just can’t find them!). It also still contained an “extra” that I’d purchased from Microsoft, Microsoft Plus Digital Media Edition – that really surprised me!
I hope you have success with this; and I hope I never have to search for this information again, but THAT is the MAIN reason I’ve posted this! Just In Case! Jill (who learns soooo much more about computing when things go wrong than when things go right!)
September 19th, 2008 at 10:39 pm
No red font change. Oops. Just remember that anything in parentheses is just a comment. and the first drive letter or series (like \hp\bin\confi~1) is what should show up on the screen, that you will be typing after. (I’m being as detailed as possible for DOS newbies.)
September 20th, 2008 at 2:14 am
I`d like to thank everyone here for the code purple input. I do computer repair and found the quickest way is to do as Yvonne #45 suggested above. remove the drive and change its boot prioity to slave … then find an xp computer and install it . Remember to adjust the folder options to view hidden folders…. open hp/bin and find run.py or use search ,,, then rename it to run._y …. it works every time ,,,, Thanks Yvonne
September 27th, 2008 at 6:13 am
Will this work
C:\hp\bin\ConfigCheck\cfgchk.bat
on an older compaq presario or will this only work with computers bought by hp and could it be possible for a system that don’t belong to hp to have an code purple error.
October 1st, 2008 at 3:19 am
Solved: Code purple on vista the easy way!!!
This Tread is for Advance users, if you are a newbie seek advice from your nerd friend now.
We all know Tattooing are a pain in the a$$
Tools: Bart’s CD, Ultimate Boot CD, on WinXP/Vista CD
so here we go:
FOR WIN XP:
-Get into C:\hp\bin\CheckConfig\cfgchk.bat
and Rename the file “run.py” to “run.p_”
or just Deleted.
-Reboot.
FOR WIN VISTA:
-Get into C:\hp\bin\CheckDMI folder
and Rename the file “CheckDMI.cmd” to ” CheckDMI”
-Reboot
this is the Easy way!!!
This Tip on Vista Found By Henry
October 9th, 2008 at 11:03 pm
Just a quick note. this happened to me the other day. I contacted HP and they are sending me a box to ship my pc back and replacing the mother board and processor and any thing else free of charge. Code purple happens because of the tattooing as said and when anyone calls them with this code they are to fix or replace your computer free of charge
Comment from another forum:
Hey all
Couldn’t help but to add to this thread. I work as an HP Phone Support tech. I”ve been working with computers since the day of the Commodore Vic 20, so I do know a little bit lol Anyway, for ALL HP/Compaq users, we have a rule in our processes that states at anytime, if a customer calls in with a code purple, no questions asked, they’ll get a replacement system. With any o/s, including Vista, we were told a code purple indicates that the memory on the integrated portion of ram on a motherboard, has some how been damaged, or erased. Most likely caused by poor manufacturing. Either way, it’s a free system. No ram reseating, hardware dignostics, or system recoveries can help out. Also, as most know, but I’ll post it anyway, new systems do not come with o/s or recovery cd’s. Recovery cd’s can be made by yourselves, using 3, DVD +R cd’s. As for o/s cd’s, we aren’t even allowed those anymore. Just a little tid bit of 411 for all. have a great weekend !!!!
DaMoose
http://www.geek.com/forums/topic/code-purple
October 14th, 2008 at 9:56 pm
My cousin had her HP/Compac machine factory restored, shouda been a painless and simple thing to do, but after it restarted she got the infamous code purple. The pc sat around for a month, then she brought it to me, I didn’t know what the hell code purple was so I came here. After reading all your post, I decided to try Henry’s easy fix, I dont run Vista and she gave me no discs so 1st I had to find a Vista Dics to boot up from. The machine was runing Vista Home Basic, and my buddy let me use his Vista home premium (Im sure any Vista disc will work). I booted from CD and used the Command Prompt. (funny thing, I never used Dos or Command Prompt before so I looked up some commands on the net to help me navigate to the directory and rename the file).
Once using Command Prompt from the boot disc, I simply used the following commands:
c: (changed to c:)
then:
chdir C:\hp\bin\CheckDMI
(it accessed the folder, but just to make sure I typed: dir, this showed me the file in the folder, and sure enough I saw the CheckDMI.cmd file).
So to rename the file I simply typed:
rename CheckDMI.cmd CheckDMI
(to make sure the file changed name, I typed: dir again, just “dir”. When the list loaded again It showed that the file name did change, and I simply restarted the machine.)
Guess what?, it worked, easy and painless… and I never used command prompt or anything, I hope this helps those using Vista, and dont feel like looking up crazy programs on the net, just find someone to loan you their vista disc, you dont need their key or anything, so tell them not to worry. Thanks Hanry, now I can go back to playing Soul Calibur 4!!
October 14th, 2008 at 10:04 pm
I ment to say, I had never used command prompt before, and I still managed to fix it. Couldnt edit my last message, anyhow… cheers!
October 22nd, 2008 at 7:56 pm
Many thanks for this tip.
It saved me a lot of time.
October 25th, 2008 at 11:07 am
Do yourself a favor. Don’t go messing around trying edit files to get rid of the code purple error. Just go to New Egg and order an XP OS disk. FDISK the drive, getting rid of the recovery partition and install XP or VISTA. You will eliminate all of those junk programs and the computer will run better than it did when it was new. Store bought computers are a joke. Learn to build your own. It’s not hard and you will be glad you did.
October 25th, 2008 at 11:46 am
I have to agree with Bill above. That’s the best solution by far BUT you could always borrow an OEM CD since they are expensive to buy and do a repair. That way you can keep those “junk” programs if you want. I’ve done 3 repairs now with various brands and it works well.
October 25th, 2008 at 2:13 pm
Bill: I didn’t know that NewEgg was giving away copies of XP! What a deal. Or do you mean give up on the legal, paid-up copy of an OS and buy an entire new one instead of fixing the old one for free? I guess that’s a solution if you are just dying to give more money to Microsoft just for the hell of it.
But it seems a little like saying “Don’t change the oil! Just buy a new car every 3000 miles.” I had a neighbor who did exactly that, but I can’t afford to do that.
Collieman: That may fix “various” brands, but it may not fix this particular problem on an HP. The OEM CD that HP sent me still required that the tattoo be correct.
November 8th, 2008 at 8:54 am
Well firstly I’d like to thank everyone for this site and their contribution as I’ve had a very stressful last 3 days trying to fix my code purple on my compaq with Vista, all because I had the motherboard replaced 17 months ago! Anyway I tried using the ntfs4dos programs to delete/alter files to no avail so in the end I removed the HD and plugged it into my new desktop which turned out to be a lot easier than I expected (sata). After doing this I was able to get into the HD to find the pesky CheckDMI folder, I tried altering the coding but this seemed to bring up another error so gave up on that idea as my coding experiance is pretty poor, however I DID notice a file called ‘Exclude.txt’ which tells the CheckDMI program to not check various aspects of the computer. So I found the DMIinfo.ini file, copied all the data into the exlcude file and then deleted all the details about the computer, saved and the computer booted up first time! I think this has to be the easiest way for Vista users is to copy this:
Build ID
UUID
ProductNumber
LanguageCode
ModelNumber
SerialNumber
SupportID
Motherboard
bid
PROD_MSWORKS
SFCHK
RP_STD
IS.N60d
C_GOB
ACPwrFail
Chan
CPUFan
DVDRW
LegacyFloppy
TVout
PCBRAND
OS
KBDRV
LScribe
ELAKE
DVDP_STD
Vos.P
MDVD_B
RC_B
FPA
.Nt
into the exclude.txt file (found in c:\hp\bin) save, restart, and hopefully it should work!
November 18th, 2008 at 11:44 am
Found this here:
http://www.techimo.com/forum/applications-operating-systems/50892-xp-configuration-error-code-purple-2.html
If you’re getting an access denied when trying cd to C:\hp boot to the miniNT partition (was H:\ for me). Once there you can then change over to the C drive and get at the files you need.
November 18th, 2008 at 11:46 am
Has anyone come across the HP tatoo utility? If so can you post a link?
December 15th, 2008 at 2:56 am
Hi, I am x my trying to fix my hp after getting the code purple- I was able to download the Ultimate cd and followed the ifo above file system tools-NTFS Tools-then Avira NTFS4dos- then nothing happens, I cannot use my keyboard, I cannot edit or write at all- Any ideas how I can fix this???
December 15th, 2008 at 11:08 pm
Get a USB IDE/SATA enclosure to access the hard drive.
December 15th, 2008 at 11:10 pm
Get a USB IDE/SATA enclosure to access the hard drive from another computer, that way you will not have restrictions over the the file attributes.
December 15th, 2008 at 11:58 pm
Here me again:
To those outthere trying to get techy and fancy with boot discs and linux and other utilities, try this way if you think is easier :
1.- Get an external USB IDE/SATA external enclosure (depending on what kind of hard drive you have), it costs $20 bucks.
2.- Disconnet the hard drive from the HP/Compaq PC and connect it to the enclosure (read the instruction about how to connect the hard drive), this is very easy.
3.- When done with the enclosure, power on the enclosure (if power is needed).
4.- Have another computer, any computer would work, connect the enclosure to the PC/Laptop and Windows or whatever Operating System will accept USB devices.
5.- Windows (I have a WinXP machine) will recognize the External USB Hard Drive from the enclosure and will mount 2 additional Drive Letter, 1 for the Data Hard drive and the other for the Recovery portion.
We will work on he Data drive not the Recovery.
6.- Surf into the drive and try to get the HP folder, then the BIN folder, then the CheckConfig folder, when you are in there do you see a file named cfgchk.bat?
7.- Kill that file!!! (delete it)
8.- Shut down the computer
9.- Unplug the USB enclosure and power it off (if power was needed)
10.- Install the hard drive to the HP/Compaq PC and power it on!!!
Should Work!!!
When done, you can return the enclosure to the store, if you want!!! otherwise you can use it as an additional hard drive for backup purpose.
These are the 10 commandments on How to get rid of the PURPLE CODE.
December 17th, 2008 at 3:23 am
I had the code purple when I tryed reinstalling
I went to the CheckDMI folder found the file CheckDMI.cmd renamed cmd to bak
I was able to reinstall vista that was on a compaq presario SR5210nx
C:\hp\bin\CheckDMI folder
to get into the directory I used winternals ERD Commander 2005 ver5.0
December 20th, 2008 at 1:18 pm
I received a code purple error tonight after mistakenly doing a system recovery. After it finished I received the “Code Purple” error. Since I’m not THAT computer literate I had a friend help me and she came across this website. IT is wonderful! However, she was attempting to do the “c:\hp\bin\configcheck\cfgchk.bat” but received the following message:
They system cannot find the path specified.
Can anyone help with his one??
I have an “HP” which runs on “XP”
THANKS IN ADVANCE FOR ANY HELP YOU CAN PROVIDE!!
)
December 21st, 2008 at 4:37 am
Hi guys. I’m receiving this message, and as im not some kind of computer pro, i also got a friend to help me, he read on another page that i should use a command like this C:/hp/bin/configcheck/run.py but it cant be find, please respond
December 21st, 2008 at 5:28 pm
and by the way, is there any way to complete this without a recovery CD
December 22nd, 2008 at 1:54 am
Jimbo: Sorry, I can’t help you. Since I’m a Linux guy, I haven’t dealt with the issue for a year now. I hope one of the other readers may be able to help you.
Martin: Read Julio’s comments. You can take your drive out and use it as an external on another computer. The bottom line is that you have to get away from trying to change the disk you are booting from. You have to be able to edit the boot drive as just another attached drive.
You can do this by using a boot disk, in which the “root” drive is in RAM, or you can do it by physically pulling your drive out of your box and attaching it as a secondary drive on another machine.
But either way, you cannot edit the drive while booting from it because the problem is too early in the boot sequence.
January 2nd, 2009 at 11:11 am
im glad to see the post still alive!
January 3rd, 2009 at 10:54 am
“im glad to see the post still alive!”
Not just alive, but accounts for 70% of the hits on my blog. If it weren’t for this and another old post on false rape accusations, I wouldn’t get any traffic at all.
Which pretty much sucks, if you think about it. I almost took my blog down a couple of months ago, but decided to leave it up as a public service mostly for this one post.
And a lot of it is due to the excellent comments you made a year ago. Thanks.
billo
January 9th, 2009 at 8:18 pm
A big thanks to this site for helping me get my Compaq Presario back! I used Julio’s “Ten Commandments of How to Get Rid of CODE PURPLE”, (message #116), and it worked great.
Following Message #113’s referral to Geek.com regarding HP’s policy of repairing all Code Purple machines regardless of warranty status, I called their Tech Support people yesterday. I spent nearly an hour with level 1 support, and finally got to a guy who identified himself as the Tech Support Supervisor. I asked both guys multiple times if my machine could be returned for free repair, and was told the same number of times that if could not be done for two reasons: Number 1 because it was out of warranty, and number 2 because I had replaced the motherboard.
I’ll save you the long story in favor of the short one: the “supervisor” said he could escalate it to the “Case Manager”. I spoke with the case manager today, and was told it was HP’s policy to repair at no charge any Code Purple machine. He went on to say “the problem was caused by hard-wiring in either the hard drive or the motherboard having become corrupted and that the problem would be repaired.” Nary a word about “tatooing” or a programming code booby trap being the problem!
I told him I was no longer interested in HP’s “assistance”, that I had fixed the problem myself with the assistance I got here. What a good feeling!
Then I called HP’s Tech Support and asked to speak with the supervisor who fed me the BS yesterday. Funny, there was no one by that name in the department…
So I told the level 1 tech about my experience with the Case Manager, and that the techs on the front line were really being hung out to dry, telling customer’s one story (can’t help you) and Case Managers cutting their legs out from under them by offering free repair. I’d hate to be working for a company who did that!
As far as I know, perhaps the Case Managers are also being used as stooges by HP. Maybe they don’t know that the problem is caused by hidden code which denies the owner use of a product which was paid for and owned by him/her.
At any rate, Hewlett-Packard has risen to the top of the heap of scuzzy, deceitful, self-serving corporations who shaft the very customers who spent their dollars with them. Oh yes, this opinion is not based on only this instance with HP. I have a folder full of letters to Mark Hurd (HP’s CEO), but nothing in response.
End of rant!
Thank goodness for this blog and other sites on the ‘net, which is becoming the “great equalizer”. These despicable companies will sooner or later find that their customers are not all dummies!!!
January 12th, 2009 at 2:14 am
Did a standard semesterly disk wipe, and got the code purple. Freaked for 2 min…then came here. I echo Henry (102) and Red Dragon (104) on their solution. It’s quick, easy, and painless. I’ll reiterate it again step by step for anyone else out there.
(Note: this specific solution is for Vista only…see other posts for XP, should work pretty much the same though but it’s a different file)
1. Obtain a Windows Vista installation disk. The version that you obtain doesn’t really matter, that won’t matter in your repair. I’m sure every single one of us has a nerd friend out there that builds computers for fun, so ask him/her politely to borrow the CD for literally no more than five minutes.
2. Start your computer and immediately insert the CD into the drive. You should get a screen that says “touch any key to boot the CD/DVD” or something like that. Touch “enter” or “b” or “F#@k HP” doesn’t matter.
3. You’ll then get a sort of welcome screen that says…”Welcome to windows vista installation. Press enter to continue…blah blah” Don’t worry about that, if you push continue, you WON’T install Vista yet. Push continue
4. The next screen should give you some sort of screen that gives you more info on Vista…blah blah. But the important thing on this screen is that there’s a button on the bottomish left side that says “repair my computer” Hit that button.
5. Ok, now you’ll probably see a screen that has a white box and says you computer status and what version of Vista you have…w/e Hit the button that continues you to the next screen.
6. Now, there should be a list of options for repairing your comp. Go to the bottom option entitled, “command prompt” and click it.
7. You’ll get a black box with some weird wording. Don’t worry…looks techy but it’s really not that bad. (I used it for the first time to repair code purple too) You’ll see a bunch of text followed by a blinking cursor (where you’ll type commands). Don’t worry about that text…Just follow these instructions. type the following:
c:
then press enter
8. Next, type:
chdir C:\hp\bin\CheckDMI
press enter
9. Now, type:
dir
press enter
10. You’ll see a bunch of rubbish text…but the important thing to notice is the file CheckDMI.cmd…this file here is THE SOURCE of your code purple problem. So…to make the file permanently disabled, type:
rename CheckDMI.cmd CheckDMI
press enter.
11. To make sure the file has been successful renamed, type:
dir
press enter.
12. The file should now be changed. Exit out of command prompt and restart your computer. And walaa…
13. You’re done! Congrats…you just successfully fixed your Code Purple problem. Now you don’t have to waste half a month of shipping your computer back and forth from an HP tech shop to get it “repaired for free”
Good luck hacking…and may God have mercy on HP cause I certainly don’t have any. And thank your nerd friend for his Vista CD.
January 14th, 2009 at 11:07 pm
Hello and need some help.
I’m currently working with a HP / A430N model.XP SP3
1-14-09, downloaded and made latest UBCD.
Boot PC and went to the following
1)Filesystem Tools
2)NTFS Tools
3)Avira NTFS4DOS
When I went into the “personal”
it just takes me back to the beginning of the boot CD.
What I am trying to do is get ahead of code purple and remove the info in the config file that tatoo’s the board and the hd.
I will check back later, thats for info thus far.
January 20th, 2009 at 6:20 pm
Hi,
I am repairing a customers Compaq Presario SR1925 with XP, which they had tried to restore and were confounded by the ‘code purple’ error. NTSF4DOS showed that the c:\hp\ directory did not exist. However I DID find the file that calls the chkcfg.bat file.
I found the file:
c:\SYSPREP\oobe.bat
On inspection it was making calls to the chkcfg file. I renamed this file and presto! The computer now boots and will continue the windows setup.
So, for those who cannot find the relevent C:\hp\bin\ file, try C:\SYSPREP and see what you have there. There was only one file in the directory and a simple way to inspect it from NTFS4DOS is as follows:
Boot NTFS4DOS, then type the following commands:
D: (Your C: drive is usually shown as D: in NTFS4DOS)
dir /S chkcfg.bat
If that command does not find the file, try this:
cd SYSPREP
dir
If a file is shown (it MAY be oobe.bat, but it will certainly end in .bat) then inpect it using:
type oobe.bat (assuming the file is named oobe.bat – if not, substitute the name of the file it found)
You should see some references to c:\hp\bin in there. Rename it using:
ren oobe.bat oobe.b__
Reboot normally, and it should be working again!
February 1st, 2009 at 2:53 pm
If you have Vista installed on your HP machine that is throwing a fit with this there is a real easy fix which I found. When the error dialog box appears press Shift+F10 to pull up the command line, type the following command without the quotes “edit C:\hp\bin\checkdmi\checkdmi.cmd”, then after the REM lines add the following code without quotes “goto cleanup”, save the file and exit the editor and restart with the following command without quoates “shutdown -r -t 0″ then your set and done.
February 1st, 2009 at 4:00 pm
That would be easy. Thanks!
billo
February 5th, 2009 at 1:03 pm
Thanks a million for posting the solution to the Purple Enigma.
I had no idea this would happen, and you can immagince the annoyance after I bought new motherboard, processor, express card and DDR2 ram.
First thing I did is I contacted the Compaq customer care online using their ‘chat online with a technician’ option because it was 11pm in England and their phone lines were shut.
I mentioned the Purple Error, and he took 5 minutes to read though his information…
Soon after he wrote ‘I request you to take your computer to the nearest ‘TechGuys’ store (London, UK) where they will be able to help you
I replied saying ‘I request you to apply for a better job’.
The following day I called the customer care number and explained that the PC was out of warranty and needed a motherboard replacement. He sounded like someone who dealt with this issue many other times. However, his answer was: ‘you should have used Compaq original components, because your computer is no longer a Compaq machine now and we cannot help you’.
I was terribly angry.
I told him that I bought three Compaq machines in the last 6 years including a brand new laptop in November 2008, and that a good customer should never be let down. I told him that the day I bought the PC i was never told about a possible ‘purple code error’ in case I replace the original components!So unfair!
I also told them that in case of fault a PC owner is entitled to replace any part he likes, and choose the technician for the repairs without having to go through Compaq. Hence the question again: why should my machine should stop working if a part needs replacement?
Luckily I did the repairs myself, so apart from new hardware costs I didn’t pay any technician, and furthermore I bumped into this blog, because not every discussion board has the right solution (in fact there are many proposed solutions out there, and I believe a mere 25% would work).
The way I did it is I run the full restore using the backup CDs, when asked to reboot or turn off for the first time i chose turn off. Disconnected the HD and installed it into another PC, deleted all the text into the .bat file and put the HD back to the other PC to complete the first reboot and… Yeah!!!
An additional note: many people don’t know that the folders hp\bin\CheckConfig
are hidden by default, therefore you should go into the properties and select ’show hidden folders’.
Anyway, my PC is back to work now, so thanks again fior sharing your knowledge with us and good luck everyone
Claudio
February 12th, 2009 at 4:17 am
Rhe Shuft F10 solution sounds great – just wish I had seen it before I wet thru the Ultimate bootdisk process and managed to edit the cmd file successfully
PSOD!
By the way – my Code purple (how pathetic MS) was caused by a failed onboard video – the pc would not even boot! I plugged an old PCI vga card in – and it booted fine, but then “Purpled” me out (a variant of BSOD, I suppose!?!?
Next problem, the old vga card is not allowing me to see the radio buttons to accept the Vista license terms.. grrr.
MS. Never short of a challenge, eh?
Great thread – and nice to ba able to post without registering..
February 14th, 2009 at 4:01 am
Thanks to Jill #98 followed your advice to the letter after downloading UBD worked like a dream and only after spending 8hrs & loading about 3 boot disc & wasting another 3 burning garbage programs…lol
Thanks a million for your assistance =)
February 27th, 2009 at 2:58 am
I am a computer technician in Darwin Australia and must admit first time I have come across this purple code error. Darn corporates but anyway thanks Henry for your quick fix suggestion ..it worked a treat when I used the F10 recovery and took the drive out and USB it to another pc.
The problem with the computer was that it was showing signs of some other programme running but could not get to clean it as it would constantly get a BSOD error. I took the hard drive out and backed up all the data and run some scans on it but when I placed it back into its home position it wanted to re activate Vista so I had no option but to run the F10 recovery and that where the purple code error presented itself.
Anyway all happy now ..just need to tidy up all the add ons that HP decide to install on these retail machines.
Many thanks
March 5th, 2009 at 7:38 pm
I have to say THANK YOU!!!! The Code Purple error opened my eyes. Had to replace the Motherboard. Began a chat session with an Hp Customer Service Tech, they said my BIOS was corrupt and kept asking if I wanted to purchase a new mobo(wasted a lot of time there). Same purple error as everyone else and just renamed the cfgchk.bat file on an XP machine and everything worked. I will never buy another HP or Compaq. Hopefully one day I can repay the favor and be able to give you some useful information.
Thanks AGAIN!!!
March 6th, 2009 at 2:47 pm
One more reason to never again buy a computer from HP (although they still make nice printers). My original reason was their laptops – for 10 cents more they could fasten the power jacks securely so I wouldn’t have had to practically totally disassemble my laptop to resolder the jack after less than a year.
Can we say “overpriced and lacking quality”?
March 11th, 2009 at 2:09 pm
I had the same issue after re-configuring the system to original factory specs using the restore disks. I ended up taking out the hard drive, connecting to my other computer with a external hookup and renaming C:\hp\bin\ConfigCheck\cfgchk.bat just to keep a copy of it if needed and replaced it with a blank cfgchk.bat file.
It worked like a charm…thanks for all the insight…it was priceless…never ever ever going to buy anything with an hp on it!!!
March 13th, 2009 at 5:13 am
I tried all of the above with a computer I was working on where I had to replace the mobo. This is what I did.
Do a full system recovery and as soon as it finishes(before the reboot) pop in some type of rescue CD. Reboot and boot the rescue CD. Go into your drive C:\ and rename the hp folder to something else. Remove disc and reboot.
This has the benefit of never running the HP garbage and bypassing it entirely. I had almost given up hope.
March 13th, 2009 at 1:07 pm
Yes, renaming the C:\HP directory will prevent several scripts from completing but allow the OOBE section of the windows catalog file to complete. However, bear in mind that you need to “rename it back” to “HP” if you are to successfully uninstall some of HPs crapware.
March 16th, 2009 at 3:35 pm
Thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, THANK YOU SO MUCH FOR POSTING THE FIX TO THIS F’IN ERROR!!!
March 28th, 2009 at 11:03 pm
I have a little different situation and was wondering if all the work done here might help.
Begin rant…I have an elderly neighbor whose HP slimline went on the fritz. She had a bad power supply which eventually led to a damaged motherboard. She told me it was out of warranty. I was going to replace the power supply and buy a cheap motherboard to help her out. She also had a hard drive loaded with malware, so I reformatted the system portion of the hard drive, but left the recovery partition intact. I contacted HP about recovering the software and lo a behold they told me the computer was in warranty. I had already ditched the faulty power supply, but had everything else. They actually told me to send the computer in for repair. After a month, they told me they couldn’t do a repair because I didn’t have the power supply. So know I’m trying to find a word around…End of rant.
What I would like to know is if I replace the motherboard and power supply is a restore possible? As the original poster said, he thinks you have every right to repair damaged equipment. Since there is nothing but a recovery partition, there is nothing to edit. Any help would be appreciated.
March 28th, 2009 at 11:07 pm
Forgot the important stuff. The operating system is Vista Home Premium.
April 12th, 2009 at 12:03 am
The 10 commandments mentioned in Psalm 116 are most instructive. Julio or Admin, if you live in Florida, (or plan to visit) I owe you a beer. HP is the Anti-Christ. Thank you for resurrecting my Pentium4 XP PC this Easter morning
April 14th, 2009 at 11:11 pm
Post #128 is the shizzy! THANK YOU!
Just use “notepad C:\hp….” instead of edit and you are in business.
You need to add REM in the 2 lines under the :mismatch section and add a line that simply gives the finger to HP “goto cleanup”.
If it takes you more than 60 seconds, you’ve been wasting too much time
THANKS!
April 15th, 2009 at 10:13 pm
Wow. Been screwing around with my desktop for 6 months trying to get the “purple pc eater” message to go away. Then i stummble thankfully across this forum and followed the BART P.E. method on vista. Done and done!!! Now im going to install the xp pack i bought to fix the one i just did for free, on the other box. Just fyi… I got the purple error message after completley rebuilding my system besides the hard drive (and i mean EVERYTHING but the hard drive). I had absolutely no problems with boot or functionallity for about 4 months until i tried to restore to previous settings. Then “WHAMMY”!! I Thank all of you fine people for the comprehensive information and the time to share it with all of us HP/Compaq frustated folks!!!! Until the next error picks its color out of the spectrum, see ya.
April 26th, 2009 at 12:37 pm
Chris Smiddy
#128
Thanks, You are the bomb!!!!
Saved mealot of head aches.
The only thinghat after scrolling down past the REM lines I replaced “:mismatch” with “:goto cleanup”
May 6th, 2009 at 9:46 am
“Code Purple” on an Windows XP system: This Worked for me!:
Okay, I have read and read and read, on this site, and on others, trying to fix the “Code Purple” problem. Many of the answers ALMOST worked for me; but I, like many others, couldn’t get to the H: drive to del the key file. At the C:\ prompt, I couldn’t CD to H:\. So what I did was to give the DEL command from the C:\ prompt. See below for the 2 detailed procedures. The first is for those who have the Recovery Disk Set, the other is for those without the set. Good Luck!
Procedures for recovery from “Code Purple” on a Windows XP system:
Procedure to recover from “Code Purple” WITH a Recovery Disk Set:
1. Load the first system recovery disk into the CD-ROM drive
2. Press R for the recover console
3. Press Alt + D to bring up the command prompt*
4. at the C:\minint\system32> prompt, type “del h:\hp\bin\configcheck” (without the quotation marks) and press Enter
5. At the “Are you sure?” prompt, type “y” (without the quotation marks) and press enter
6. At the prompt, type “exit” (without the quotation marks) and press Enter
7. Press Alt + Q
8. Press Q to quit the Recovery Window (The PC will automatically begin to boot. You should now be free of the Vastly Evil Code Purple.)
*I have found that there is no need to Select “Advanced Options” prior to pressing Alt + D.
Procedure to recover from “Code Purple” WITHOUT a Recovery Disk Set:
If the Recovery Partition on your hard drive is intact, this should work:
1. Turn on PC and repeatedly press F10 (pause for a second between key presses) until the Recovery Screen comes up
2. Press R for the recover console
3. Press Alt + D to bring up the command prompt*
4. at the C:\minint\system32> prompt, type “del h:\hp\bin\configcheck” (without the quotation marks) and press Enter
5. At the “Are you sure?” prompt, type “y” (without the quotation marks) and press enter
6. At the prompt, type “exit” (without the quotation marks) and press Enter
7. Press Alt + Q (The PC will automatically begin to boot. You should now be free of the Vastly Evil Code Purple.)
May 22nd, 2009 at 6:56 am
Thankyou guys,you saved my pc and my sanity!
we too hade the “code purple” error,and had tried our back up disks,but they didn’t work.
i called all the companies,Compaq,PC world,and tech guys still to no avail,
then i came across this site,so we tried the last suggestion on the page,and it worked a treat.
Once again guys,Thankyou.
May 26th, 2009 at 9:08 pm
Before I give some props for this fix I must complain… Why the %$#^ would one file keep my pc from working?!?!? Absolutely rediculous.
Anyways, here is what I did to fix my computer of the CODE PURPLE error!!!
I used the Ultimate Boot CD 4.1.1. Aftering inserting the disc the screen displays “boot:” and I hit enter to get to the menu. I selected
1.) FILESYTEM TOOLS
2.)NTFS TOOLS
3.) ACTIVE NTFS READER FOR DOS V1.0.1:
4.) then enter on “OK” for everything that pops up.
Once the reader comes up I hit “CTRL+F” and did a search for “CFGCHK.BAT” file. I selected “GOTO” and then wrote down the exact file location. It ended up being in D:\HP\BIN\CONFIG~1\.
I then used Avira NTFS4DOS to delete the file. I had to use the reader because when I would type in “DIR” in AVIRA NTFS4DOS, it would stop searching and wouldn’t give me the command prompt back.
All in all it worked great and fixed a computer that I was about to toss into the dumpster.
June 3rd, 2009 at 10:42 am
If you want to be ticked at someone, it should be Microsoft. Microsoft forces OEM’s to install and use crapware like this to prevent “piracy”. I made the switch to 24/7 Desktop Linux only, (using Ubuntu) about 4 years ago after dual booting Windows for years. I’ve never looked back. Almost all the OEM’s use some form of DMI checking, Sony, Toshiba, Dell, HP, ACER and they’re all a pain in the neck. I am an HP, Dell, Sony, Toshiba ASP and I’ve been dealing with code purple since I can’t remember when.
June 3rd, 2009 at 11:25 pm
THANK YOU! Chris Smiddy and Nitrazepam. I was starting to lose hope till I saw your posts for the Vista solution. I was pissed that it was so easy to do when it took me forever to find a solution. XD
June 8th, 2009 at 11:09 pm
What do I do if I missed the second step on #128? I did the ‘“edit C:\hp\bin\checkdmi\checkdmi.cmd”, then after the REM lines add the following code without quotes “goto cleanup”‘, but then I missed the ‘restart with the following command without quoates “shutdown -r -t 0″ then your set and done’ part. Now it’s trying to get me to re-install windows and says I need a product key. Anyway to get back to that command screen?
June 10th, 2009 at 8:47 pm
Hey thank you for providing information but i really donot know what to do. I see that i can fix my purple code by deleting some files or changing names and stuff however, I CANNOT do that because my PC gets “system configuration error message” right after the screen where there are options of system recovery(f10) , f1(boot) and ESC. I cannot even go to start menu and do anything
I tried system recovery, system restore but I always get that error when i start pc and then cannot do anything after it. Please tell me if i can do anything to solve this problem. ALso could you please tell me that how much it would cost to get new, or fix “tattoo” on motherboard?
June 10th, 2009 at 9:45 pm
I WILL ALWAYS ALWAYS REMEMBER YOU FOR HELPING ME PLEASE:) I HAVE LOTS OF SCHOOL WORK TO DO AND I HAVE NO OTHER COMPUTER BUT AT SCHOOL. SO I CANNOT DO ANY WORK AT HOME , PLEASE HELP ME , IT WOULD BE EXTREMELY HELPFUL.
) System config error. cannot go to start menu because it stops before it.
problem in windown xp, compaq SR2011WM (crappy computer but need it
June 11th, 2009 at 9:13 am
John, I think you are missing the important point of most of the solutions that have been proposed here. All of them basically involve stepping outside the system to tinker on it — whether by mounting the drive on another computer, using a CD-based distro, or whatever. You can’t fix this from the inside, which is what you are trying to do.
June 11th, 2009 at 12:18 pm
ohh okay, thank you. I was trying #146 but when i type in the del h: ……………………., it says the system cannot find the path specified. If you know what i am doing wrong please tell me:) Also, because i m not computer pro, i think i will have to take my computer to a technician. Could you please tell me that how much would it cost to fix my problem? Thank you again for helping me:)
June 11th, 2009 at 7:43 pm
I’m afraid I can’t tell you how much someone else should charge — I don’t know where you are or what is actually wrong with your computer.
Personally, I’d dump Windoze and install Linux — that would take care of your problem nicely.
June 12th, 2009 at 4:16 pm
Hey thank you very much for replying. could u tell me the estimated cost? I live in NJ and i believe that i will have to retattoo the mother board i guesS??? I CANNOT LIVE WITHOUT MY COMPUTER:( just joking. but i really need it hehe
June 17th, 2009 at 8:14 am
Thanks for all the information. I had code purple with Vista Ultimate on HP Pavillion. Used the preinstalled restore. The solution which worked for me:
Used Vista Installation Disk to get to Command Prompt. C:/dir/ah
> cd c:/hp/bin/checkdmi > erase *.* >cd.. > rd checkdmi > rebooted and everything is perfect. Couldn’t have known about this without all of the above contributors. THANKS
June 29th, 2009 at 12:23 pm
The instructions at 128 are brilliant. Just saved me alot of work. You, my friend, are a genius.
July 6th, 2009 at 3:02 am
Followed Yvonne’s directions at #45 and it worked perfectly. Just be sure to make hidden files viewable and it will work. Same goes for the main point in the article.
July 20th, 2009 at 12:33 am
Bill,
This will ultimately be a Vista 64 Bit successful repair of the Code Purple repair – but first I have to rant a little; I’m so angry with HP.
Your site has saved me a tremendous amount of time and aggravation. My computer is under an extended warranty for in-home service except HP is making me wait until next Thursday (4 days) before they send someone. But I had to beg them to send someone because they said it couldn’t be repaired on site and the MB had to be replaced.
Then I found your Blog through Google, became enlightened and I can’t believe I was so naive and blind to a company like HP setting their customer base up to purchase new computers based upon false and planted information purposely integrated into their OS for those us that change configurations, etc.
First I tried to use the repair outlined in response #23 by Nitrazepam but the lines he referred to were not exactly as printed and I was very confused so I chose to go to the next resolution authored by Red Dragon.
Red Dragon’s response 104 appeared to be and proved to be very easy. Luckily, I had another Desktop computer that I could run the AWM Red Serial ATA cable from the Vista drive in the bad computer to the XP computer’s SATA3 plug. The good computer was running Windows XP. The bad computer is running Windows Vista 64Bit in a RAID configuration that made the two drives appear to be one drive – in the event of one drive failing they could be reversed and I would just add a new drive in place of the bad drive.
I unplugged the Vista Drive cable from its motherboard and plugged it directly into the XP motherboard and then turned on both computers.
I opened the “F” drive and clicked on Explore and continued to drill down to the CheckDMI.cmd folder within the “hp” folder.
The XP computer displayed the Vista drive as the “F” drive. I never removed the drive from the Vista computer – I just connected the cable from the Vista drive to the XP computer. I then opened the “F” Drive – not the Factory Restore” Partition on the “F” drive because I had previously performed the restore function on the Vista computer and was confronted with Code Purple again. I just couldn’t understand why since I followed the instructions exactly.
Once in the CheckDMI.cmd folder I changed the name to checkDMI vs. CheckDMI.cmd.
After completing this and reconnecting the drive to the Vista computer I still had the Code Purple in my face and then I realized because of the RAID configuration I had to make the same change to the other Vista drive and once I did – PRESTO – I was back in business.
In my case I wouldn’t have had to pay because of my extended warranty but it’s not right for young people or young families to be faced with a repair fee or replacement cost under any artificially created circumstances specifically to spawn sales. I am a former lender and we always had to abide by Truth-in-Lending and I don’t see this as any different – corporate citizens have to be held to a high standard or lose our loyalty.
HP appears to be getting away with some form of deception from loyal customers and something has to be done in a Congressional setting or through our states attorney generals.
If anyone wants to contact me I can be reached at dry1@bellsouth.net and they should type Code Purple Error in the email Subject line so my Spam catcher doesn’t snatch it away.
Good luck to all – I hope this helps and thanks for this blog.
July 20th, 2009 at 7:37 pm
i just wanted to thank all of you very much for your input. i got the loverly code purple about 3 days ago and fumbled around until 1 hour ago i came upon this and thanks to all the input i was able to locate my particular file in vista through ubuntu 8.10 and delete it and all in all it took me 5 minutes. so danke very much to all of you =)
August 1st, 2009 at 6:35 am
Thanks, this was very helpful! I’m deeply impressed that the original post was updatede to point out the different solutions in the comments. Good work!
August 5th, 2009 at 9:41 pm
First of all thanks to all of the gurus who posted the solutions relating to emptying or deleting the configchck.bat file. Now for another interesting wrinkle; how many have tried to update their copy of Windows after performing this and had it fail the validation test? How many have received the message that your copy of Windows needs to be activated? I did, and called the number at MicroSoft. I got an automated “attendant” who walked me through reading 7 sets of numbers to find out that the copy could not be activated because it wasn’t genuine or that it had been installed with the wrong Product Key. It went on to tell me to click the “Enter New Product Key” delete all information and enter the Product Key for that PC. In my case it was on a sticker on the side of the PC. Once that is completed, you need to call Microsoft again, read the same set of numbers (different values after changing the Product Key). For me, it worked, the automated system read me 7 6 digit numbers to enter, then press the “Next” button. If no errors are encountered, then the copy is activated. I just wish there was an attorney who visits this blog and has had the same problem. What a class action suit!!! HP/COMPAQ @#$^O$#@%I@#$^@^^@^#$ and then some lol
Peace
August 6th, 2009 at 8:29 am
Steve:
What can I say? Micro$oft is Micro$oft. Switch to Linux and leave all that stuff behind — and get a much more robust and easy to work with environment!
If this were a Linux problem, it would have been fixed years ago. Or, more important, it never would have been (or will be) a Linux problem.
August 11th, 2009 at 12:43 pm
Found this solution on FixYa. Nothing else seemed to work and I wanted a quick fix. I’m not a computer guy so this fix was fast and painless. Works in about two minutes without disks or backup ect –
If the Recovery Partition on your hard drive is intact, this should work:
1. Turn on PC and repeatedly press F10 (pause for a second between key presses) until the Recovery Screen comes up
2. Press R for the recover console (mine was up already)
3. Press Alt + D to bring up the command prompt*
4. at the C:\minint\system32> prompt, type
“del h:\hp\bin\configcheck” (without the quotation marks) and press Enter (switch the letter h to a d if the h didnt work for you).
5. At the “Are you sure?” prompt, type “y” (without the quotation marks) and press enter
6. At the prompt, type “exit” (without the quotation marks) and press Enter
7. Press Alt + Q (The PC will automatically begin to boot. If not, shut down and restart your computer. Your computer is now fixed.
August 27th, 2009 at 2:24 pm
My Son just went through the dreaded Code Purple when he ran a recovery on his HP Invent. Like so many others he had get the motherboard replaced but did not run into a problem until he did a recovery. We made several attempts at correcting the problem but it wasn’t until I read Comment 104 that a light blub lit up in my head. My Son has an old Vista Upgrade disc that will do the same thing as a full blown version. I put the disc in restarted the computer and was able to navigate to the reapir screen just like a full version would do. It will allow you to get to the Repair screen. from that point it’s a matter of rewriting the CheckDMI.cmd file, I used Red Dragon’s (Comment 104) steps and the problem fixed. It turned out to be a simple fix.
August 31st, 2009 at 11:07 pm
I read almos all the solution, but I have better solution
when Came up the thing with the code purple in windows vista after the recovery, just disconet the hard drive and conect like slave in another pc. Open the hard drive and delete the folder Hp with all info…. make sure are deleted because was hidden.
disconet the slave hard drive and connect in the computer again and reboot and finnish the installation of windows vista
September 8th, 2009 at 7:39 pm
#128 i hope undesrtand i will do it in spanish to help people with the same problem i had the code purple error for 3 months and my warranty company doesnt help me only if i pay 300.00 dlls they changed motherboard 3 times hard drive, cpu, power supply,and the error still there now im so happy #128 for your advise my windows is vista the only thing is what does REM lines mean and how can the people save the file, i did it but with little minutes of problems anyways you are a bomb tankyou a lot (para todos aquellos con el problema codigo purpura sigan las indicaciones de el #128 yo lo rwesolvi muy facil y no compren hp ni compaq jeje
September 10th, 2009 at 8:37 pm
had recently herpes virus found in my blood. what I haveto do??? I’m in panic…
September 13th, 2009 at 9:15 pm
for everybody dont buy extended warranty you will pay hundreds of dlls and after your original factory warranty expired your computer will be already old and ship on any store i have really bad experience with the company circuitcity protection plan they have another company name nationwide tel# 1800555-4615 and 1877-5208324 they never fix my code purple error they expend 3 months tryng to fix this problem they put me on hold for more then 45 minutes after that they hang on the phone people i do this because i dont want somebody have the same experience like me the worse company in the worl lol
September 23rd, 2009 at 11:58 pm
I once read somewhere that “If you don’t take care of the customer, someone else will.”
I used to be a fan of HP, but unfortunately, in the area of PC support – almost non-existent, I no longer refer anyone to HP products.
Thanks to all who posted solutions here, as I too ran into the “Code Purple” message, after having restored a corrupted partition table. I was already looking to order replacement Vista CDs.
Ironically, I could not find the link on the HP site (circular flow of go here, then there, then here again…). so I searched once again for the error and got here.
Long live Linux and quality-generated community solutions.
September 26th, 2009 at 2:56 am
I changed my MB did not what to do with the recovery cds and after a while i just formated the HDD and installed a new OS and did not use the recovery cds because i would get a message like the pc dose not match the cds or something like it is ther anything i could do to be able to use the cds anymore ?
October 8th, 2009 at 4:03 pm
I agree 100% with S0s3. The only difference is that I never was a fan of HP. The trouble is when you work in the domain what you see the most of is the WORST brands, and not the best!
I am glad to say that Billoblog’s bandwidth usage will be going up!
Thank you, thank you, thank you! I have searched for a resoloution to this. And along with S0s3, “Long live Linux and quality-generated community solutions!”
October 12th, 2009 at 1:02 am
For posters #143 and # 128
where exactly do you place the “goto cleanup” line. There are many REM lines of code?
thanks,
October 14th, 2009 at 9:30 pm
Thank you so much, #128 and #143. Like so many, I had tech support reinstall the Mobo and later when I needed to reinstall the OS, Code Purple. Ugh.
Roger, what I did was this:
When the Code Purple screen came up, I hit SHIFT F10 to get a cmd window.
Then I typed:
chdir C:\hp\bin\CheckDMI (hit enter)
ren CheckDMI.cmd CheckDMI (hit enter)
Then I rebooted and no more Code Purple!
I am running Vista.
Thanks so much to the blog owner for keeping this post up to help us all. Thank you, thank you.
F*ck Compaq/HP/Micro$oft!!!
October 17th, 2009 at 6:34 pm
GREAT 128! But now i cant run certain HP programs…My Pre-installed Microsoft Word doesn’t run, it gives me “This program is not licensed to run on this computer”
I’ve even tried deleting the ProductID and DigitalproductID in the registry
October 25th, 2009 at 8:21 am
You can acces the file by booting Hiren’s Boot CD 9.8 which includes MiniWindowsXP then you can find the file in comment 23 and edited it worked a charm for me. Plus, i’ll recommend my customer not to buy compaq/hp ever again,
October 29th, 2009 at 7:33 pm
Like the rest of you, I have wasted countless hours on this issue. It is ridiculous that HP Recovery did not work on a PC that I bought. I will likely never buy another HP PC again. I hope this information helps someone.
To find more information search for keywords: HP DMI Tattoo
The HP DMI tattoo tools can be found here:
http://forums.mydigitallife.info/showpost.php?p=41256&postcount=32
Open the file with winzip or winrar, extract using the password mentioned in the posting, and read the instructions in the included PDF files.
The motherboard name can be looked up here:
https://warp1.external.hp.com/ProductLookup/ProductLookup.aspx
Other settings may be in:
c:\hp\bin\WISRDMI.INI or WISDMI.INI (they were for me except I used my serial number from the sticker on the back of the PC)
By the way, flashing your motherboards DMI with this information also solves the PC Doctor 5 for Windows licensing issue!
p.s. – If you know anyone else who can use this please pass it on. I know a lot of people need it. I have also uploaded it here but it can only be download 10x (also try the link in the forums.mydigitallife.info forum post I link to above): http://rapidshare.com/files/299763890/tattoo.rar.html
October 29th, 2009 at 7:40 pm
Regarding #179, I forgot to mention the rar password is: thisisit008
November 2nd, 2009 at 5:22 pm
Number 104 worked for me,Thanks Red Dragon
November 2nd, 2009 at 5:29 pm
I forgot to add, I’m using Vista Home Premium
November 3rd, 2009 at 11:32 pm
Thank You…..comment 166 worked
November 5th, 2009 at 10:45 am
This is a quote from a HP warranty associate regarding code purple errors – they are NOT accepting responsibility for this at ALL.
“In the entire history of this project, we have NEVER had the need to have recovery disks on-site to complete the scope of work. For the customer to have full functionality of their PC they may need to have their unit recovered but the SOW is for hardware only. We are not concerned with the customer’s software. The “Code Purple” is an issue with the tattoo.”
B*LLSH*T enough said. They will replace hardware all day long, but will not accept responsibilty for their software screwups.
My reply which was unheard by the HP/AT&T:
“Customer does NOT have restore CD’s. It is not possible to get rid of the Code purple error by replacing the system board and then restoring from the restore partition on the system – you MUST use the restore CD’s – which the customer does NOT have. They need to order them.”
November 6th, 2009 at 6:13 am
Hewlett Packard sent a further email asking why I didnt respond to their email about my Code Purple, so I sent an email telling them That I heard it was a booby trap and I had managed to fix it.
Today they sent another asking how I did it so it may help them resolve issues in the future, yeah right !! they mean they can put another trap in to stop people fixing it themselves.
November 15th, 2009 at 5:54 pm
Comment #104 with a caveat:
If you have Vista Home Premium on a partitiion without recovery disks, #104 WILL WORK. I had to use this ebcause I had no way to edit the CheckDMI.cmd file and none of the other file solutions existed on my machine.
1) Start up the PC.
2) When you get to the “Code Purple” window hit Shift+F10
3) Follow #104 instructions.
4) Your PC WILL NOT reboot- it will go directly into first-time use setup.
I hate Microsoft and I hate HP. Just thought I’d add that.
I’m buying a Mac next!
November 15th, 2009 at 6:22 pm
“I’m buying a Mac next!”
I’ve got nothing against macs (my wife uses one), but you don’t need to leave the PC hardware world. Just install Linux!
I have an HP slimline box I use for my server, and have never had a “Code Purple” error — because I run linux on it. No pain, no strain.
November 24th, 2009 at 2:57 pm
Hi, Helpe Please
Model A6430la
The purple code not found, but my Windows Vista freezes.
bios F11 command does not work for the recovery of the system, HP sent me two times, the recovery disks but these send message “system recovery disk does not correspond to the model” and support HP said that is This is the tattoo and take you to a service center ”
Already use the Ubuntu, but I dont find the ChechDMI folder, I despair, can I delete partitions?, create and format and install the recovery disks that HP sent me or that what do you recommend me
pleas and sorry with my english.
December 1st, 2009 at 1:25 am
Chris Smiddy, you’re a geneous.
Post #128. Simple as anything, yet worked perfectly for Vista. Thank you so much.
December 3rd, 2009 at 8:14 pm
The $20.00 Fix. Get your self a ide or sata usb adpter and connect hard drive to another computer. Use your hard drive as an external and browse to the what ever drive letter it comes up with. Mine was f:\hp\bin\ConfigCheck\cfgchk.batfile. Clear the contents and save. .Just change the security to full conttrol on the file
December 3rd, 2009 at 8:34 pm
20 dollar fix. Attach your hard drive to another computer via sata/ ied usb adapter and browse to (where x is the drive letter the other computer assigned the subject hard drive) X:\hp\bin\ConfigCheck\cfgchk.bat it like an external
December 4th, 2009 at 2:11 pm
Fantastic. I’m working in a computer store and a guy brought this computer in with this problem. Fixing it for free just on principal
December 14th, 2009 at 10:03 am
I used the solution from helpfull at #166. I couldn’t get the promp with alt+D so I Booted from an old xp disk, got on to the promp and deleted the file as detailed. The reload from the pre-installed recovery console worked fine with no code purple…..thanks everyone for your input
December 17th, 2009 at 2:33 pm
Have a HP M7747C Media Center PC with Vista Home Premium. The PS and Add-on Video card went. I used the recovery partition, but since I was not using the add-on video card, but instead of the On-board card I got a code purple. I tried the recovery partition 2 more times, no luck.
Used solution #23 and everything worked outstanding!..Booted up using an Ubunto 9.1 cd. Opened up/displayed the CheckDMI.cmd Made the necesary change (Step 6 ) and the rest is history! Definatly one for the pocket tech reference manual!
Thanks to everyone who contributed.
December 20th, 2009 at 1:39 pm
I’ve never bought hp, compaq, dell or gateway because of anti-OEM parts usage steps they have in place such as tattoos and even as far as specially designed RAM and other measures, this is just another reason I will ALWAYS, ALWAYS build my systems and never buy pre-built. That is just rediculous.
December 24th, 2009 at 2:49 pm
you guys are awesome! post 176 says it all . im up and running and this things been down for months . easy no down loading just the shift and f10 etc…..wasted a lot of time trying to ake boot cd and this way was easy and worked great …this from a no techie i just folloed the steps thank thank thankk youuuuuuuuuuuu
January 4th, 2010 at 8:11 pm
CODE PURPLE FIX XP AND VISTA
Hi Y’all, here is the fix for your issues with the dreaded code purple.
I am a computer technician with 28 yrs in the job and what HP does is morally wrong but hey big business gets away with crap all the time!!
XP)open up the file C:\hp\bin\checkconfig\cfgchk.bat and rename the file run.py to RUN.p_ or delete the whole deal.
reboot and voila!!
Vista) Get into c:\hp\bin\checkdmi folder and rename the file checkdmi.cmd to CHECKDMI reboot and Voila
(SIDE NOTE)copy the file and put it in my docs or on a flash drive as a backup copy before doing the above.
I had this issue on a brand new customers pavillion with a HDD failure, HP level 2 hardware support supervisor told me they have to have the unit back there to fix the issue, even though they sent me a new HDD already imaged but didnt tell me it would crap the bed due to the stunts they pull.
Good luck everyone and lets stick it to HP for the crap they pull…
Digbert90
January 8th, 2010 at 4:44 pm
thank you #128! i was able to fix the problem with your solution.
January 9th, 2010 at 5:22 pm
Mate. Brilliant. Again I think it was “Smiddy”? (sorry mate) #128 I believe, the goto cleanup solution.
I spent more than 2hrs looking for a solution for this until Ifound myself here.
Worked like a charm.
Just 1 note, I put the goto cleanup line directly after the 1st solid block of REM’s. There are more furtherdown which might confuse some people.
But thanks again mate. You’re a bloody legend and if you’re everin Australia, Ioweyou a beer. Or 6.
I willalso post this on my (new) blog with all names and credit intact, in the hope it helps someone else that have been victims of compaq “piracy”.
(apologies too, my spacebar is sticking)
January 12th, 2010 at 6:02 pm
Gracias…. problema solucionado
el modelo en que funciono es el
Compaq Presario SG3010LA…
SALUDOS DESDE MEXICO D.F.
January 13th, 2010 at 9:11 am
Wow all of this sounds great I just don’t understand stand any of it :S so should i just jump into this trap and take it to bestbuy ? inoticed alot of these solutions require 2 computers and i only have 1 so i am on myps3 trying to find a solution -_-” any suggestions? digiman_091@hotmail.com
January 16th, 2010 at 6:38 am
Thanks all you guys and gals, especially Chris Smiddy (post 128). I followed his/her method and just fixed one HP Pavilion a6190d in Singapore. Regards and God Bless you all !
January 29th, 2010 at 6:19 pm
Anybody ever have to replace a hard drive? I got the computer to accept the recover disc but it did’nt work right. Could not find C:\hp\bin\ConfigCheck\cfgchk.bat. It keeps telling me that it refers to a location that is unavailable.
February 7th, 2010 at 12:33 am
I will not buy HP or COMPAQ & will diligently spread the message to my circle of friends & family.
February 11th, 2010 at 1:29 pm
I have tried all of the commands, and get either not found ,or device not ready . Can someone help?
February 12th, 2010 at 1:21 am
Thank you very much. I have been working with many E9150t systems of late and HP has been AWFUL to work with in many ways.
I work with Dell systems quite often and I can tell you that they are incredible compared to HP. Their systems work, they don’t pull this garbage and they do what they say they will (for the most part) when it comes to warranty. Dude, I’m gettin a Dell!
February 17th, 2010 at 10:10 am
#104 worked for me. I used an Ubuntu disk to boot.
This has been an incredible journey for what should have been a simple reinstall.
I’m having negative thoughts about HP.
February 21st, 2010 at 7:17 pm
There is a well known adage, “Buyer beware.” There is another I use, “Seller beware.” If you sell a product that irritates and aggravates your customer enough, they will buy from someone else next time. I will not be purchasing another hp product due to this Code Purple issue and other problems I have had with hp.
February 22nd, 2010 at 8:14 pm
Got code purple just the other day. A HP tech was prompting me to recover my system when it happened. When I first bought the computer 3 years ago the motherboard had to be replaced by HP in home support. Guess, the repairman forgot to make the recovery program recognize the new motherboard. HP is repairing it now.
February 23rd, 2010 at 11:59 pm
Hi all,
recently most of you new hp owners of elite desktops are aware of the faulty mobo’s. Well I had one of those, and a call to hp yield a suprise on my part, a new mobo being shipped next day to me. They wanted to schedule a tech to come install it, but being that I have built a few machines I told them to not send one. They would only ship the mobo if I scheduled a tech apointment, so I set a date a few weeks from now, got the mobo yesterday, installed it, boot up, and got code purple. As you know and I now know tech support would not help me, they said I should of let them install it and now I should send the computer back for repair. I told I new what the code ment and would like to have the utility to “tattoo” the board, they denied the request saying that I was not computer savy enough and thats why a tech has to do it.
Well I stumble across this site and all I can say is THANK YOU, THANK YOU, THANK YOU. I shift f10 and renamed the checkdmi and here I am up and running on my LAST hp computer. Thanks again
February 24th, 2010 at 3:44 am
wonderful, i came across this before, the only help i found was installing another windows when those magic key codes were working and simply wipe all D: partition in just one. Well now its different, and i took my time to find out better solution, thanks again, only difference was i used another computer to edit the HP hard drive using an USB connection, fast and easy. I couldn’t believe they do that, this should do a big First PAGE in any big newspaper, or on news like they did to Toyota right now.
March 6th, 2010 at 1:55 pm
Thanks a lot Jill, your directions were easy to follow and it worked great! thanks
March 16th, 2010 at 9:28 am
I was fixing this problem for a person I know at work. He has an HP Pavilion A6217C with Windows Vista. It’s really easy to fix on Vista. What I did was remove the hard drive and install it on my PC (I’m running Windows XP on mine)as a secondary drive and go to: X:hp\bin\CheckDMI – where ‘X’ is the assigned drive letter you get from your computer when you install the hard drive. Then just find the CheckDMI file that is located on the folder and just ‘DELETE’ the file. Yes, I said DELETE THE FILE. You will see that the computer will run just fine without it. It should make sense to you that it works just fine because you are not deleting a system file. You are just getting rid of the junk HP decided to put on the computer to confuse you and steal your money.
March 16th, 2010 at 10:30 pm
Thanks for the post. I was able to replace my motherboard and then reinstall Vista using the recovery disk after deleting the mentioned bin file. Thanks!
March 17th, 2010 at 9:19 pm
Jill ( comment 98) saved my hp’s very life. I cannot thank you enough for your walkthrough.
All Hail Jill!
March 17th, 2010 at 9:21 pm
Oh and HP officially lost a previously loyal customer.
Time is money, friends. And I lost too much of it for that company to have another minute.
Contact local computer stores for info on custom builds that will save you time and money. Trust me.
March 25th, 2010 at 3:37 am
Several months ago I had to replace the MB and went through the CODE PURPLE bypass in order to re install the system with the new board. Worked for a while. Now there is some XP problem that the boot up is not completed and does not come up even in safe mode. When trying to use the recovery disks a note comes up and interrupts:
“These PC recovery discs do NOT support this PC model” Seems related to the CODE PURPLE again. Any suggestions? Thanks.
March 25th, 2010 at 4:15 pm
Thanks to all above. Had my HP reapired under extended warranty. ‘Code Purple’ on recovery – Found this site but I am not repairing / sorting it out. HP put the crap on, HP changed the motherboard, so HP can do the work and I will be invoicing them for my three trips to store plus time taken. It will be a fight but they will soon get cheesed of with this old silver surfer. I am retired so time is not an issue to me.
April 8th, 2010 at 2:53 am
Thanks a million for help solving the “Code Purple”
Shout-out to #128; save the night.
April 8th, 2010 at 12:17 pm
Comment 128 was spot on!
Thanks!
May 5th, 2010 at 2:54 pm
So I followed several suggestions here and most of them “almost” worked. This system is an OEM install of windows vista 32 home premium in an HP Pavilion desktop. I used f11 on boot to boot into the recovery partition and restored the computer to it’s original factory condition. I rebooted and when the code purple shit hit the screen used the shift+f10 trick to get into the dos prompt, which showed a path of c:\windows\system32. I tried to use “edit” to access the file at c:\hp\bin\checkdmi\checkdmi.cmd but it said “edit” was not a valid command. Sure as shit I checked the file “dir” and no EDIT command in \windows\system32. No notepad command either….weird, but not deterred, I just renamed checkdmi.cmd to checkdmi.old (type cd c:\hp\bin\checkdmi, then hit enter, then type ren checkdmi.cmd checkdmi.old, hit enter, reboot) problem solved!!! Thanks to all!!
May 24th, 2010 at 11:57 pm
I also had to replace the motherboard on my 1 1/2 year old a6300f Pavillion. It took me some time to get around the motherboard tattoo which prevented both the recovery DVDs and the hidden partition from working. However, at one point, after getting the “not compatible” message from the recovery DVDs, I re-booted and removed the DVD during the boot process. Somehow and probably by chance the hidden partition recovery routine took over and
allowed me to go through the system recovery process.
Well, my good luck was shortlived and I got the code purple when the system recovery was almost done. I got around that by using one of the techniques mentioned in this post (editing CheckDmi.cmd) and was finally able to recover the Vista OS. However, it wasn’t automatically activated as is normally the case and I had to input the key from the label on the PC to get it activated. The only problem I had left at this point was with the Hardware
Diagnostics by PC Doctor that came with the PC. When you run this program it first checks the motherboard tattoo and a mismatch triggers a “not licensed for this PC” error. Well, now, Thanks to post 179, I got my hands on the motherboard tattoo utilities and after some heavy duty reading and trial and error I tattoed my motherboard and HDD. This cleared the PC Doctor issue. In addition, If a System Recovery is needed again in the future it should be a lot easier. So thanks! 179 for the links and needed information. A couple of things I ran into:
On my new motherboard the cpc_DMI CD would not complete the boot process at first. It would hang up at “-Diskinit”. I suspected that DOS wasn’t able to access my SATA HDD and changed its setting in BIOS to
compatibility mode. This cleared up that problem and I was able to complete the motherboard tattoo using the DMI information I had gathered from the labels at the bottom of the PC. Once this was done I had to change the HDD setting back to Enhanced mode before I could boot into Vista.
The other thing I ran into was with the HDD_DMI CD. It writes to physical sector 8 of the first drive. If you have more than one drive in your system drive1 might not be the drive where you have Vista installed. So if anyone plans to try this it would be better to either disconnect any extra drives in your system or disable them via BIOS.
Good luck to all others that run into this issue!
June 3rd, 2010 at 1:34 pm
I just got rid of my code purple error on my Compaq XP. After updating Windows (131 files) was told to restart my computer. When I did it ask me to put in my password, which it said was invalid. I can’t get into my computer without doing another recovery, then fixing code purple… AGAIN! Then the same thing happens, access denied, improper password! What do I do now??
July 4th, 2010 at 1:47 pm
in responce to post 146 thank you! it worked with one exception instead of h:\ mine was del I:\hp\bin\configcheck
after doing this i restarted my pc and runs better that before!!
LIKE ELVIS SAID THANK YA THANK YA VERRY MUCK LOL
July 6th, 2010 at 11:38 pm
Thank you Admin and Chris. Chris Smiddy’s comment (128) worked for me on Windows 7. It took a few tries pressing shift+f11, but I eventually received a cmd prompt. Also, instead of “edit C:\hp\bin\checkdmi\checkdmi.cmd”, I used “notepad C:\hp\bin\checkdmi\checkdmi.cmd” as “edit” is not an option on Windows 7
For the full set of instructions, please see Chris Smiddy’s comment (128)
July 6th, 2010 at 11:42 pm
Sorry, I typed “shift+f11″ in my previous comment (255) I meant “shift+f10″. Admin, if you can, please change my text and delete this comment to prevent confusion.
Thank you.
July 7th, 2010 at 4:53 pm
My HP/Vista started shutting dow to the blue screen of death after installing a windows update. I decided to do a full restore back to day one…this was going well untill code purple popped up. I followed 128’s directions and it seemed to be fixed. Untill I unthinking reinstalled the updated and i was back to the blue screen…tried to redo all the above steps but now it just keeps returning to the code purple. I see lots of suggestions but am afraid I don’t know which one to try. Can anyone please help.
July 8th, 2010 at 10:36 am
ok tried 143’s suggestion and he was right not more than 60 seconds…thing were great back to new for the rest of the day, shut down for the night, started up the next morning fine then…….the blue screen of death has returned. after several restarts, and blue screen it seems to be working but am sure the blue screen will return, any suggestions to get this to stop? Thanks for the great fixes and suggestions!
July 8th, 2010 at 4:31 pm
Many thanks to Bill for keeping this running!! Also thanks to Michael (#146), information was accurate and dead on. Solved my problem after hours of dispair. My hats off to you gentlemen!
July 14th, 2010 at 8:59 am
comment 104 worked for me just fine. took a matter of couple minutes. thanks for the helpful info folks
July 15th, 2010 at 3:10 pm
Special thanks to “helpful” (comment #166). What I have spent hours on the phone with HP and researching on the internet to fix, you were able to help me in a matter of minutes!!!
July 19th, 2010 at 5:44 am
Thanks Bill and Chris (comment 128), I spent hours with HP support trying to fix a friends pc after a virus attack, then Windows would not authenticate and they suggested a system restore. It seems they needed to authenticate while SP1 was still installed. Then I got the Code Purple error, one problem after another. Then I found this page from Bill and followed the instructions in Comment 128 and it was back in business. Thanks guys!
July 27th, 2010 at 10:26 pm
The partition in my drive was sufficient to reformat and install win 7, unfortunately now I have a code purple on a screen that says “Setup is preparing your computer for first use”. Shift-f10 does not work. Will viewing my hd from another computer still be a viable option? Thanks to everyone out there.
July 29th, 2010 at 8:41 am
It’s always a bit amazing when a “fix” actually works. #146 method without restore disks (I have them, but where?)worked like a charm – thanks Michael.