Here is the issue with tattooing a motherboard and code purple.

This is not a windows problem in itself but a built in anti piracy feature that HP and Compaq uses. This is a built into the BIOS of the motherboard and also installed on a hidden partition of the hard drive on some configurations.

What happens here is that HP uses a program called python that performs a system configuration check when the restore disc's are used to restore a computer back to the original configuration. The motherboard model numbers and version numbers are stored into the bios of an HP machine. These numbers are also stored on the recovery disc's and also on the hard drive.

Everything must match or you get hit with the code purple after the restoration takes place. The term "Tattoo" is just a code for an embedded bios as there is no such tattoo to be stamped on the motherboard. The motherboard or/and hard drive must be sent into an authorized service center so that a new bios can be written to the board and drive. The resource is done through a set of computer engineered boot disc's that are not made public for any reason at all.

The use of the embedded restore disc's is to prevent people from using the restore disc's on another (non HP) computer. This does not cancel the act of using an original OEM Microsoft installation disc to install the operating system to that machine....only to not allow illegal usage of the restore disc's.

If you use a third party program to wipe the drive or reformat the drive then it is possible that the embedded partition was destroyed and the checksum cannot be completed. As such the drive would need to be repartitioned by a qualified HP certified repair station, that has the correct engineer discs to perform the operation.

If you have performed a BIOS upgrade and then used the restore discs, then it will stop the checksum from being performed and the code purple will appear.

There are work-arounds.....

The easiest is to purchase a new OEM original Microsoft operating system and install it to the computer using the new licensing.

You can try to locate a thirdparty BIOS (unembedded) and flash the motherboard to remove the python checksum.

You can use the restore discs and perform the restoration and get the code purple error. Then remove the harddrive and slave it to another computer and look for this line:

python c:\hp\bin\ConfigCheck\run.py

delete the line and all should be ok.

There has been situations that the removal of the editing did not actually fix the problem but caused a boot.ini issue on reboot. Use at your own risk!