99 percent of the time, I would say your hard drive is defective... probably the first four sectors have peeled.
It is not really "partially booting" in the way that you imagine, but is rather part of HP's system for handling the boot process. The BSOD is your clue.
Do not mess with it further, if you have valuable data on the drive, as it is perhaps still possible to rescue data while jumpered as a slave. But I doubt the drive will ever work again. The more you mess with it, the greater your risk of recovering valuable data.

 

Thanks for the reply.. How would I go about jumpering as a slave on a notebook.. There is no HD cable to speak of.. Would I have to do it on a desktop with an IDE adapter or something? How about the power connector on it would that be the same as on a desktop?

 

Note: I didn't say it was easy.
I use a mobile had drive adapter from www.geeks.com or from www.cyberguys.com (I'm sure other online computer parts locations handle it). Costs anywhere from $2.95 to $9.95 depending upon the day. This allows you to re-jumper the drive (sometimes difficult due to jumper size) then plug it into a desktop drive that has an EIDE cable and a power plug.
It takes some time to figger it out, but like most things, is very easy once you know how. It is raw stuff: a socket device that fits a 2.5" laptop drive, a power cable that fits a standard desktop PC, and a socket that fits an EIDE cable.

The drive is then detected by Windows on the desktop if it is jumpered correctly as slave, and the PC hard drive is jumpered as master.
Then you can use recovery software, or drag and drop the key folders or files to spare space on the Master hard drive.

I suggest you leave it plugged in, and on until done... Because once turned off, they sometimes do not work when powered back up.
We have been doing this on all customer computers for years.
Good luck.

 

OK, I found the adapter for 4.95 at geeks. The laptop has already been turned on and off several times so I dont think that will matter.. I guess I'll have to remove the hard drive to see if it even has a jumper, I'm assuming it does.. I'm well experienced with desktops and PC's in general. I have replaced notebook HD's before just never tried to slave one on a desktop. Thanks for the info..

 

If it is not a SATA drive, it will have four jumper pins. You can find their configuration on the manufactures web site so that you know which are master, slave, and cable select. They are normally shipped with jumpers off, meaning turned sideways. When used as a single drive, they do not require a jumper.