Fixing Recovery Partition
I have hp dv6-3037tx
I recently installed a new motherboard in my computer. Ever since, I have not been able to boot into the recovery partition.
E.g. I press F11 at startup and nothing happens, it just boots directly to the Windows 7 Home Premium OS. I already have physical recovery disks (which do work) so I guess it may not be important.
3 questions:
1. If I do a system restore using my recovery disks, will the recovery partition be effected in any way?
2. Anyone got any ideas how to fix my recovery partition?
3. Do I really even need the recovery partition if I have the 5 HP Recovery Disks in a safe place?
Thank you all
This question was solved.
View Solution.
If the Esc ad then F11 sequence no longer works then your BIOS sees that a change to the original partition scheme has happened. That is why th F11 no longer invokes the Recovery manager.
Unless you have a need to do a recovery just leave the recovery partition as it is. If you need to use it, set the partition to an active status. When the partition is set to active then upon powering on the notebook the recovery manager should begin.
Unfortunately, usb thumbdrive recovery media is far more reliable and faster than the recovery disks. CD\DVD media is not as durable as a USB thumbdrive.
****Please click on Accept As Solution if a suggestion solves your problem. It helps others facing the same problem to find a solution easily****
2015 Microsoft MVP - Windows Experience Consumer
Similar Messages
-
I want to backup my MacBook Pro to iCloud, but receive the error message "recovery partition required". Is this easy to fix?
Thanks for your time.Sounds like your missing the partition. I have seen this before when I friend had a bad drive and took it in. Apple store replaced the driveamd installed lion but no partition. I had to reinstall lion from a full install DVD to build the recovery partition. Looks like you need to do the same. No data will be lost if you don't re-partition with the disk util. Just run the lion install from within lion and use the default. It will build the partition for you. Then re-run the apple updates for the 10.7.2 update which embeds the find my Mac part of iCloud in the recovery partition.
Good luck. -
How I tried fix my partitions and restore a Dell Diagnostic Partition.
UPDATED: 2 September 2012
UPDATE: Now that I reflect back on the incidence, I realize that the Dell Utility partition had lost its ability to boot long before I had messed up my partition table. But I realized it only when I was testing all my partitions after fixing the partition table. But as I have already written this long post, lets just keep it here for future reference of anyone else stumbling across a similar problem. Read on to know about my experience.
RECOMMENDATION: I do not recommend trying out all the steps below as they did not completely solve the problem for me. If you need the Diagnostic Utility, download the update package from Dell's support website for your model. This package can be used to create a boot-able USB drive and/or CD/DVD. These work fine and are pretty fast also.
Something strange happened to me and I am now reporting my experience in trying to solve it (somewhat unsuccessfully!!)
First of all, my setup is: Dell Studio 1555 laptop. I dual boot Windows 7 and Archlinux. So here's how it went:
After using the partitioning tool Gparted under Archlinux to resize a partition, I found a problem had occurred. The Partition was NTFS formatted and all of my data files were stored on it. The partition worked fine under Archlinux as I was able to access my files fine under it. But in Windows, although the partition was listed under Windows explorer, it wanted to format it!! When I tried to access the partition it gave an error that it was not formatted (
The drive is not formatted, do you want to format it now?
). Of course, that was not right and Gparted had messed something up. I fixed that using Testdisk under Archlinux (See the Details). So now the partition problem under windows was fixed. But now another problem cropped up under Archlinux. When I booted into Archlinux and started Gparted to confirm everything was fine I saw something strange in Gparted. The whole space on my hard disk was marked as "unallocated" under Gparted. Windows and Archlinux could "see" the partitions. By this I mean that I was able to boot fine under both my OSes. And I could access all my files under all my partitions. But somehow Gparted was not able to "see" them. Gparted was reporting my whole disk to be marked as unallocated. After that I researched a lot and lots of stuff happened experimenting to fix the problem. I used a lot of utilities. But actually only one fixed the problem-fixparts from the gptfdisk package. But it seemed like a lot of work trying to get the problem fixed (See the Details).
Now we get to the point in discussion. I was able to get my partitions back under Gparted. But I lost the Dell Diagnostics Utility partition's ability to boot up. [Actually, now that I reflect back on the incidence, I realize that the Dell Utility partition had lost its ability to boot long before I had messed up my partition table. But I realized it only when I was testing all my partition after fixing the partition table. But more on this later.] It gave an error that the partition was not found.
So, in short: After all this restoring partitions' visibility under Gparted, I realized that the Dell Utility partition on my Studio 1555 was not booting up. To explain this, it means that when I press F-12 when starting the laptop and select Diagnostics from the menu to run the Diagnostic Utility and after running the Pre-boot System Assesment tests when I consented to boot the Diagnostic Utility partition, it gave me the error that the partition was not found. When I tried to run the "Dell 32 Bit Diagnostics (Graphical User Interface version)" update package under Windows, it resulted in a similar error: Partition not found.
For some background on what makes the Dell Utility partition so special, please read this thread and the third post on this thread.
WARNING: You and only you are responsible for your data. Please make a backup before performing any of the partitioning steps below.
NOTE: Please read the entire post before actually performing the steps.
So, to try and fix this I did the following:
Boot into Windows 7.
Open Disk Management under the Computer Management console (To open the Computer Management console, right click on Computer in the Start menu and select Manage).
Reformat the Dell Diagnostic Utility partition as FAT(not FAT32). This is the first partition on the drive (marked as Healthy (OEM Partition) under the Status column). [This step may not be required, however I had done it. See Notes below.]
UPDATE: After reading around a bit I found that these steps to format the partition might not actually be necessary. Simply changing the type of the partition (as detailed below) might also work. However as I had done that, lets just keep these steps over here.
Reboot into a Linux distribution Live CD (I had Ubuntu 10.10). Or, If you dual boot with a Linux distribution that does not complain about the now inconsistent fstab entry, you can also boot into that distribution directly. I had to boot into Live CD to fix my /etc/fstab.
UPDATE: After considering all the aspects from start to end I have come to a conclusion regarding the efficacy of this method on dual boot machines with Windows and Linux installed. I doubt anyone with a dual boot Windows/Linux setup would be able to boot into the Dell Diagnostic Utility even with the Utility Partition restored. This is detailed below.
(As noted above my Archlinux install did not boot up after I had reformatted my Dell Diagnostic Utility partition. This is because I was mounting the Dell Utility partition at boot using fstab inside Archlinux. And I was using the UUID to mount the partition. After reformatting the partition its UUID changed. So, it wouldn't mount. And because of how my fstab was setup Archlinux won't boot. So, I had to boot into a live environment to fix this. This step applied only to me. YRMV.) Fix the fstab entry.
(This step also applied to me.) Boot into the repaired Linux Distribution.
And open a Terminal.
In the open terminal run fdisk on your drive, e.g.,
fdisk /dev/sda
This is how it looks:
[abhishek@Nitaichand ~]$ sudo fdisk /dev/sda
Password:
Command (m for help):
To change the partition type give the appropriate command, i.e.,
Command (m for help): t
Specify the partition, i.e.,
Partition number (1-10): 1
Type L to see available codes:
Hex code (type L to list codes):L
0 Empty 24 NEC DOS 81 Minix / old Lin bf Solaris
1 FAT12 27 Hidden NTFS Win 82 Linux swap / So c1 DRDOS/sec (FAT-
2 XENIX root 39 Plan 9 83 Linux c4 DRDOS/sec (FAT-
3 XENIX usr 3c PartitionMagic 84 OS/2 hidden C: c6 DRDOS/sec (FAT-
4 FAT16 <32M 40 Venix 80286 85 Linux extended c7 Syrinx
5 Extended 41 PPC PReP Boot 86 NTFS volume set da Non-FS data
6 FAT16 42 SFS 87 NTFS volume set db CP/M / CTOS / .
7 HPFS/NTFS/exFAT 4d QNX4.x 88 Linux plaintext de Dell Utility
8 AIX 4e QNX4.x 2nd part 8e Linux LVM df BootIt
9 AIX bootable 4f QNX4.x 3rd part 93 Amoeba e1 DOS access
a OS/2 Boot Manag 50 OnTrack DM 94 Amoeba BBT e3 DOS R/O
b W95 FAT32 51 OnTrack DM6 Aux 9f BSD/OS e4 SpeedStor
c W95 FAT32 (LBA) 52 CP/M a0 IBM Thinkpad hi eb BeOS fs
e W95 FAT16 (LBA) 53 OnTrack DM6 Aux a5 FreeBSD ee GPT
f W95 Ext'd (LBA) 54 OnTrackDM6 a6 OpenBSD ef EFI (FAT-12/16/
10 OPUS 55 EZ-Drive a7 NeXTSTEP f0 Linux/PA-RISC b
11 Hidden FAT12 56 Golden Bow a8 Darwin UFS f1 SpeedStor
12 Compaq diagnost 5c Priam Edisk a9 NetBSD f4 SpeedStor
14 Hidden FAT16 <3 61 SpeedStor ab Darwin boot f2 DOS secondary
16 Hidden FAT16 63 GNU HURD or Sys af HFS / HFS+ fb VMware VMFS
17 Hidden HPFS/NTF 64 Novell Netware b7 BSDI fs fc VMware VMKCORE
18 AST SmartSleep 65 Novell Netware b8 BSDI swap fd Linux raid auto
1b Hidden W95 FAT3 70 DiskSecure Mult bb Boot Wizard hid fe LANstep
1c Hidden W95 FAT3 75 PC/IX be Solaris boot ff BBT
1e Hidden W95 FAT1 80 Old Minix
Type the desired code, i.e.,
Hex code (type L to list codes): de
Write the partition table with:
Command (m for help): w
The partition table has been altered!
Calling ioctl() to re-read partition table.
WARNING: Re-reading the partition table failed with error 16: Device or resource busy.
The kernel still uses the old table. The new table will be used at
the next reboot or after you run partprobe(8) or kpartx(8)
Syncing disks.
[abhishek@Nitaichand ~]$
Download the required Diagnostics Update Package from the Drivers Download page for your model. Got mine from here.
Run the downloaded package under the OS you it downloaded for. That is, run the .exe on Windows. Or, if you downloaded the .bin file for Linux then first make it executable:
chmod u+x CL1367A0.bin
And now run it under a Linux distribution with an older version of python installed (I think <2.7). I say this because the .bin package didn't run on an updated Archlinux for me, probably because it has the latest python. I ran it from the Ubuntu 10.10 Live CD and it ran fine under that.
On Windows, If you are not automatically prompted with an option to update your Utility Partition then you need to browse to the location where the package was extracted (for me it was C:\dell\drivers\R239866).
Now you need to manually run the extracted file (for me it was DDDP.exe). Most probably you'll need to right-click it and run it as an Administrator. And if all went well, it will extract/update the diagnostic utilities to/on the Dell Utility Partition.
I believe the above steps should be sufficient for someone who's lucky and who's update package is smart enough. However these steps were not sufficient for me. My "Partition not found" error was gone because I had changed the partition type. And so the update package was able to recognize the partition and extract the necessary files to it. But I was still not able to boot the utility partition. After the Pre-boot System Assessment although I no longer got the "Partition not found" error, but I was just dropped onto the GRUB boot menu prompt.
[UPDATE: As stated above, I realize that the recovery partition had lost its ability to boot long before I had messed up my partition table. But I realized it only when I was testing all my partition after fixing the partition table. Please refer to this forum thread for further Details. I do not think that it is possible longer to boot from the Dell Utility Parttion on my setup which has GRUB installed to the MBR. But the rest of the post documents my attempts to slove the problem without the knowledge from the forum post.]
Anyways, it was a pain to again and again set up/update the partition and test it after waiting half an hour or so for the Pre-boot System Assessment to complete. But I was determined to solve the problem at-least partially, until next time. So I created a GRUB entry to boot the Utility partition. Assuming the partition is the first partition on the drive (which is the case here), the grub entry is simply:
title Dell Utility
rootnoverify (hd0,0)
chainloader +1
I tried downloading an older update package. I updated my Partition with it. And tested. Still, I was unsuccessful. I researched a little bit and found this link. Out of frustration,I decided to use brute force this time . So, the below are the steps which let me have at-least a glimpse of The Dell Diagnostic Utility booting up from the partition:
Backup your partition table using the sfdisk command (not fdisk).
Follow the instructions in the link I gave above (i.e., http://community.spiceworks.com/how_to/show/1123) and build your Utility Partition from scratch.
Now after that when you try to boot into the OS you'll be presented with an blue bar on top. This is because the mkup batch file from the Dell Diagnostic/Drivers CD/DVD wiped your partition table and rewrote it with only one partition on it- the Dell utility partition.
Boot into a Live environment and restore your partition table from the backup created earlier using sfdisk.
Now boot with a Windows disc to repair your Windows boot problem. This applied to me but may not apply to you.
Again boot into a live environment and restore GRUB to MBR.
After a reboot press F-12 to get to the BIOS boot menu and select Diagnostics.
Let the Pre-boot Assessment run and after its complete it will ask you to press any key to boot the Dell Utility partition. Do that.
You'll notice your still dropped into GRUB instead of getting the Diagnostics GUI.
Now when on GRUB prompt don't boot any other OS.
Press any key (other than <Enter>, that is ) to stop the timer if you have one set.
Now look carefully at the boot menu.
Remember I told you that I had created a GRUB menu entry to boot the Dell Utility partition. Select that. And if you are lucky you might just be able boot the partition. This worked for me (finally!).
After this initial run I was unable to run the Diagnostics GUI from the GRUB menu entry again. I haven't tried to re-run the Pre-boot Assessment and wait to see, if I'm able to boot it from there. But now, I'm satisfied that at-least the file there are in a running condition.
Also, the update package can be used to create boot-able USB drives or boot-able CD/DVDs which can run the Diagnostics just fine. They are almost as fast as the partition (especially the USB which seems even faster). They are recommend, instead of going into this trouble to recreate the partition. That is unless you are a purist/perfectionist .
Notes:
At first, I panicked and tried a lot of steps that are not exactly documented above for the sake of convenience to others who might refer.
I have thus rewritten the post in a manner to make it very general in nature as it did not become very fruitful for myself. If you attempt to use this guide, use common sense where necessary .
Of course, if you are trying to build a Utility partition on a bare hard drive or you're feeling adventurous, you can always follow this link .
Last edited by bhadotia (2012-10-08 19:03:18)bhadotia wrote:Anyway's the file downloaded from dell to update the partition for Studio 1555 is corrupted (checksums don't match). My partition still doesn't boot. I'm working to fix this and will update my post when I'm done.
The file seems to create the CD/DVD/Image and USB just fine. So I used this only to create a CD image which I then wrote on a blank CD which seems to work fine. Also, I played around a bit and had some partial success in booting the partition. I've updated my original opening post with the new findings.
Whew!! what a waste of time! Never want to do all of this again .
Last edited by bhadotia (2012-03-03 00:05:22) -
Can't boot from recovery partition in Mountain Lion
I've installed Mountain Lion on two different boxes so far: a 20" iMac at home and a Mac Mini at work. Both had up to date Lion installations prior to the upgrade. After installing Mountain Lion I am not able to boot in to the recovery partition on either one. Whether I hold down Command-R to go directly to the recovery parittion, or simply hold down Option to get a choice of boot devices, I am taken directly to the login screen.
The recovery partition is there on both boxes, and I can mount it and examine it using 'diskutil' from the command line. I created a USB image of the recovery partition on the iMac, and the Startup Disk control panel allowed be to select it as a boot device, but the box (both boxes, actually; I also tried it on the Mini) booted directly to the login screen.
I honestly don't know whether I could boot to the recovery partition prior to upgrading to Mountatin Lion or not. When I first installed Lion on the iMac I did not get a recovery paritition, but Apple sent me a USB drive and after cleaning up the disk (getting rid of an unused Boot Camp partition) I was able to get a clean install with a functioning recovery paritition. However I never booted from it after confirming that it worked.
Anyone else see anything like this? Or have an idea how to fix it?
- LarryOk but you can get the Option key to work.
There is a utility to Rebuild the recovery HD partition.
Look here first.
Removing and rebuilding a malfunctioning Recovery HD partition « Der Flounder
Then in that article a link to download or find the Recovery HD utility on the Apple website.
But that was originally for Lion. So you may have to rebuild the Lion R-HD then Reinstall Mt Lion over the top of your current install of Mt Lion for it to make the Mt Lion R-HD.
Depending on the age of your Mac's you may also be able to use the Online (Internet) Recovery HD system. To get to that with a R-HD partition on the system, even if that R-HD partition sin't working, you hold down Command+Option+r keys when starting the system (And yes with the USB keyboard attached). -
Time Machine Recovery Partition
Hi,
I am using an external HDD as my TimeMachine.
I know that it had a Recovery Partition on it.
But I seem to have lost it after I erased/reformatted it.
i THINK I'd like it back: I mean it can't hurt, right?
I just reformatted it and have redone my TimeMachine backups because I did a repair and stopped it partway thru.
Needed to take my MacBook away.
And corrupted the disk.
I thought better just start again.
But now I see it has done its first backup but I don't see a Recovery Partition on it.
I'm 100% there WAS one before I reformatted it and started over.
See copy of my diskutil list of BEFORE I reformatted.
I reformatted because I decided to get rid of the separate WinCloneBackup partition.
I was using it to store copies of my WinClone backups of BootCamp, but I've stopped that.
Doing it on another HDD.
Initial TimeMachine partition map:
/dev/disk5
#: TYPE NAME SIZE IDENTIFIER
0: GUID_partition_scheme *4.0 TB disk5
1: EFI EFI 209.7 MB disk5s1
2: Apple_HFS Time_Machine_Home 3.8 TB disk5s2
3: Apple_HFS WinClone_Backup 200.0 GB disk5s3
4: Apple_HFS Recovery 16.0 GB disk5s4
Current Partition map:
/dev/disk2
#: TYPE NAME SIZE IDENTIFIER
0: GUID_partition_scheme *4.0 TB disk2
1: EFI EFI 209.7 MB disk2s1
2: Apple_HFS TimeMachine_Home 4.0 TB disk2s2
I thought Partition 4, the Apple Recovery, was added by TimeMachine???
Am on MacBook Pro 2012 with Mavericks.
If curious, I have a 1TB SSD Crucial plus a 1TB HDD WesternDigital on my MacBook.
So I thought I'd use a 4TH HDD for TimeMachine.
I also use CarbonCopyClone on a separate HDD to backup.
AND a separate HDD for TimeMachine at work.
Any idea?
Thanks,
AlabHi,
I appreciate the help here, and I'm not trying to be argumentative, but this really doesn't seem consistent to me.
The Terminal diskutil list command will list all partitions on any drive as far as I'm aware.
Including recovery.
Not so?
The posts on other threads seem to say that.
LowLuster, those are just Finder screenshots you've posted: I understand that the Recovery partition is usually hidden on Finder.
But not on diskutil list.
I posted two diskutil list shots of my TimeMachine HDD: before and after.
The one BEFORE reformat showed a partitiion with "Recovery": Partition 4.
The one AFTER does not show that.
For clarity I do again.
Initial TimeMachine partition map:
/dev/disk5
#: TYPE NAME SIZE IDENTIFIER
0: GUID_partition_scheme *4.0 TB disk5
1: EFI EFI 209.7 MB disk5s1
2: Apple_HFS Time_Machine_Home 3.8 TB disk5s2
3: Apple_HFS WinClone_Backup 200.0 GB disk5s3
4: Apple_HFS Recovery 16.0 GB disk5s4
Current Partition map:
/dev/disk2
#: TYPE NAME SIZE IDENTIFIER
0: GUID_partition_scheme *4.0 TB disk2
1: EFI EFI 209.7 MB disk2s1
2: Apple_HFS TimeMachine_Home 4.0 TB disk2s2
They are different disk numbers because the diskutil lists were done with different HDD connected.
So BEFORE I did the reformat, TimeMachine was disk5.
And AFTER the reformat it was disk2.
I booted up with the option key, and I only see the startup disk recovery option.
Nothing from TimeMachine.
See attached photo.
I see BootCamp (which doesn't work properly after Mavericks screwed up my partition, but I'm about to fix that.
That's on another thread.
But that is why I want REALLY good backups in case something goes wrong.
I also attach sudo fdisk /dev/disk1 of the TimeMachine HDD.
No Recovery partition.
You can see that only one of the GUID potential partitions has anything in it: Partition 1.
There is NOTHING from a Recovery partition.
And fdisk shows EVERYTHING: nothing is "hidden" from it.
Alans-MacBook-Pro:~ arjarvis_mbp$ diskutil list
/dev/disk0
#: TYPE NAME SIZE IDENTIFIER
0: GUID_partition_scheme *960.2 GB disk0
1: EFI EFI 209.7 MB disk0s1
2: Apple_HFS Mac_SSD 869.9 GB disk0s2
3: Apple_Boot Recovery HD 784.2 MB disk0s3
4: Microsoft Basic Data BOOTCAMP 89.3 GB disk0s4
/dev/disk1
#: TYPE NAME SIZE IDENTIFIER
0: GUID_partition_scheme *1.0 TB disk1
1: EFI EFI 209.7 MB disk1s1
2: Apple_HFS Mac_HDD 999.9 GB disk1s2
/dev/disk2
#: TYPE NAME SIZE IDENTIFIER
0: GUID_partition_scheme *4.0 TB disk2
1: EFI EFI 209.7 MB disk2s1
2: Apple_HFS TimeMachine_Home 4.0 TB disk2s2
Alans-MacBook-Pro:~ arjarvis_mbp$ sudo fdisk /dev/disk2
Password:
Disk: /dev/disk2 geometry: 219051/255/63 [3519069872 sectors]
Signature: 0xAA55
Starting Ending
#: id cyl hd sec - cyl hd sec [ start - size]
1: EE 1023 254 63 - 1023 254 63 [ 1 - 4294967294] <Unknown ID>
2: 00 0 0 0 - 0 0 0 [ 0 - 0] unused
3: 00 0 0 0 - 0 0 0 [ 0 - 0] unused
4: 00 0 0 0 - 0 0 0 [ 0 - 0] unused
Alans-MacBook-Pro:~ arjarvis_mbp$ sudo gpt -r -vv show disk2
gpt show: disk2: mediasize=4000787030016; sectorsize=512; blocks=7814037168
gpt show: disk2: PMBR at sector 0
gpt show: disk2: Pri GPT at sector 1
gpt show: disk2: Sec GPT at sector 7814037167
start size index contents
0 1 PMBR
1 1 Pri GPT header
2 32 Pri GPT table
34 6
40 409600 1 GPT part - C12A7328-F81F-11D2-BA4B-00A0C93EC93B
409640 7813365344 2 GPT part - 48465300-0000-11AA-AA11-00306543ECAC
7813774984 262151
7814037135 32 Sec GPT table
7814037167 1 Sec GPT header
I just did a diskutil list for my CarbonCopyClone HDD, I know it has a Recovery partition (it gives you an option to make one).
See the diskutil list:
/dev/disk0
#: TYPE NAME SIZE IDENTIFIER
0: GUID_partition_scheme *960.2 GB disk0
1: EFI EFI 209.7 MB disk0s1
2: Apple_HFS Mac_SSD 869.9 GB disk0s2
3: Apple_Boot Recovery HD 784.2 MB disk0s3
4: Microsoft Basic Data BOOTCAMP 89.3 GB disk0s4
/dev/disk1
#: TYPE NAME SIZE IDENTIFIER
0: GUID_partition_scheme *1.0 TB disk1
1: EFI EFI 209.7 MB disk1s1
2: Apple_HFS Mac_HDD 999.9 GB disk1s2
/dev/disk2
#: TYPE NAME SIZE IDENTIFIER
0: GUID_partition_scheme *4.0 TB disk2
1: EFI EFI 209.7 MB disk2s1
2: Apple_HFS TimeMachine_Home 4.0 TB disk2s2
/dev/disk3
#: TYPE NAME SIZE IDENTIFIER
0: GUID_partition_scheme *3.0 TB disk3
1: EFI EFI 209.7 MB disk3s1
2: Apple_HFS CarbonCopyClone_SSD 1.0 TB disk3s2
3: Apple_Boot Recovery HD 784.2 MB disk3s3
4: Apple_HFS CCC_WinClone 450.0 GB disk3s4
5: Apple_HFS CarbonCopyClone_HDD 1.5 TB disk3s5
There are TWO Recovery HD listed here: on my startup disk0 and on CarbonCopyClone disk3.
And nothing for TimeMachine disk2.
So I'm still puzzled: how do I get TimeMachine to have a Recovery partition on it?
I definitely used to have one.
Alan -
Can I use the HP Recovery partition after formatting and repartitioning the rest of the hard drive?
I recently had my HP Pavilion dv4 2145dx laptop (Windows 7 64-bit) go kerput. The Geek Squad said that the motherboard died. I've purchased another laptop, and I'm using that one for now, and I am using the hard drive from the old dv4 as an external.
I'm planning to keep using the hard drive from the old dv4 as an external for now, but I'd like to be able to fix the dv4 at some point in the future. Here's the problem: to get the most out of the old dv4's drive as an external, I'd like to repartition it so that there is one NTFS partition and one HFS+ partition. That way I could use it easily with both my Mac and Windows machines.
But if I do that, I'm not sure if the HP Recovery image would still work. If it didn't work, then if/when I get the old dv4 a new motherboard, I couldn't restore the OS from the Recovery partition. This is a problem, because I didn't create Recovery Disks (stupid, I know - I'm definitely making them for the new machine).
So I'd like to do one of these two things:
1) Create my dv4 Recovery Disks. Can I do this if the dv4's drive is mounted in an external enclosure?
2) Format and partition the dv4 drive (leaving the Recovery partition intact), and later recover the system from the Recovery partition. Would the Recovery partition still work under those conditions?
Thanks for any help anyone's got.
This question was solved.
View Solution.Hi:
Anything you do to the C:\drive will render the recovery partition inoperable.
You won't be able to create a set of recovery disks unless the drive is operable in the notebook.
Can you still read all 25 characters of your W7 product key on the bottom of your busted notebook?
If so, you can do this...
If you can read the 25 character Microsoft windows 7 product key, you can download plain Windows 7 ISO files to burn to a DVD for the version of windows that came installed on your PC, and that is listed on the Microsoft COA sticker on your PC's case.
Burn the ISO using the Burn ISO option on your DVD burning program and burn at the slowest possible speed your program will allow. This will create a bootable DVD.
Or use the Windows 7 USB/DVD installation tool to compile the ISO file you download from Digital River. Link and instructions below. You need a 4 GB flash drive to use the USB method of compilation.
http://www.microsoftstore.com/store/msstore/html/pbPage.Help_Win7_usbdvd_dwnTool
Use the 25 character product key on the PC to activate the installation.
The key will activate either a 32 or 64 bit installation.
Then go to the PC's support and driver page to install the drivers you need.
Link to the W7 ISO file downloads is below.
http://www.mydigitallife.info/official-windows-7-sp1-iso-from-digital-river/
Or, you can probably still order a set of recovery disks for your notebook from HP.
http://h10025.www1.hp.com/ewfrf/wc/document?docname=bph07143&tmp_task=solveCategory&cc=us&dlc=en&lan...
Paul -
After install of Mavericks, it looks like my system kernal panics and just sits there. I tried waiting over two nights. Tried reinstalling twice, booting ro the repair partition and repairs permissions/drive/verify , with no problems. Tried reseting PVRAM(or whateverit called). Recovery partition now has Mavericks as OS. Im running a iMac i3 27 inch circa 2011. Any ideas? Can still bootcamp into windows.
Thank youbhadotia wrote:Anyway's the file downloaded from dell to update the partition for Studio 1555 is corrupted (checksums don't match). My partition still doesn't boot. I'm working to fix this and will update my post when I'm done.
The file seems to create the CD/DVD/Image and USB just fine. So I used this only to create a CD image which I then wrote on a blank CD which seems to work fine. Also, I played around a bit and had some partial success in booting the partition. I've updated my original opening post with the new findings.
Whew!! what a waste of time! Never want to do all of this again .
Last edited by bhadotia (2012-03-03 00:05:22) -
To make a very tedious story short, My Mac decided that it would crash and not reboot the OS. I decided to bite the bullet and just reformat, sacrificing my very important data. I have tried just about every trick in the book. There is one one major problem I am facing. When I try to reformat the internal HDD using Disk Utility. It fails to unmount. "Make sure that all applications and files are closed on this disk.", Suggesting that the computer is ignoring my command at startup to boot from my external recovery drive, and using the Recovery partition on the problem drive, making it impossible to reformat the drive. When the internal drive is removed and connected by another method it is not recognized.
I failed to read the fine print on the box that suggested I purchase another Mac to fix problems with my primary Mac because any utility with the potential to fix the problem can only be run on a functioning Mac.Booting to any version of the Recovery system, the built in partition on the internal drive, a recovery partition on an external drive or from the Online internet system will not stop you from formatting the Macintosh HD partition on the internal drive. So your problem is not that you are booting from the internal Recovery HD partition. It is probably your internal hard drive has problems, failing.
You could try booting the system from the Online system. At startup hold down the Option/Alt + Command + r keys and keep them held down until you see a globe on the screen. That will boot the system from across the internet from the Apple servers completely removing the internal drive as a boot source. If you still can't erase and format or repartition and format the internal drive then your drive has problems and will need to be replaced. -
How do I start a recovery directly from the recovery partition? Windows 8
Is there a method by which I can go directly to the recovery partition on my CQ58 and initiate a system recovery? I downgraded my system to Windows 7 Home Premium and now I am ready to go back to Windows 8. I made sure to create the Windows 8 recovery disc yet when I run it everything starts normal but then it displays a message Unable to reset your PC. A required drive partition is missing. Yet the recovery partition is there and all of the software is still contained in it. When I click on the folders on the drive it denies me access. What do I do?
Hi there ,
Thank you for visiting the HP Support Forums and Welcome! This is a great site to get answers and ask questions. I looked into the issue you are having with the missing partition on your Notebook. I found a document called Resetting Your PC to Resolve Problems for Windows 8. I also found a document for you from Microsoft. It is called Fix: The drive where Windows is installed is locked. I think that this is the Manual for your Notebook as well (please double check it is the right Notebook.) If not I would be happy to get you the right one. Open the manual and press ctrl+f on your keyboard. A little box will pop up (its a search box). Type in partition to see every time partition is mentioned in the whole document and use the arrows to find out where. If you pay special attention to Chapter 7 page 74 to 79, it will give you information about partitions and troubleshooting.
Please follow these provided troubleshooting steps.
Have a great day! -
Missing Recovery Partition and Unrecognized File Systems
So, a long time ago I accidentally deleted my recovery partition and have recently been trying to fix it so that I can upgrade my OS to Mavericks. After browsing around here I found the Recovery Partition Creator 3.7 and used it to create a new recovery partition. Using the diskutil list command everything seemed to be fine and it looked like the partition was successfully created so I tried reinstalling OS X Lion by holding command R at startup. Doing so brought up the internet recovery menu and I selected reinstall Lion which was still unsuccessful because "a recovery partition could not be created". So, I decided to check in disk utility to see what might be wrong and I used the disk utility debug command in order to access disk utility's debug menu and show all the hidden partitions. Now, looking at these partitions I see two hidden partitions: disk0s1 which is an EFI partition, and disk0s3 which is the Apple Boot Partition that was created by Recovery Partition Creator 3.7. After verifying the partitions, disk utility is telling me that both my EFI and apple boot partitions have unrecognized file systems, my Macintosh HD partition is fine. At this point I do not know what to do.
Below are photos of the diskutil list and of what disk utility is showing me for the two hidden partitions.
For reference I am running OSX Lion 10.7.5 (11G63) on a early 2011 13 inch Macbook Pro (Base Model).
Bootrom version: MBP81.0047.B27
SMC Version: 1.68f99
Thank you all in advance for your help, feel free to ask me any questions.Just an update, I went ahead and installed Lion again over the existing TM restored installation using the Lion Update file and at least File Vault is working. Interestingly, I still do not have a Recover partition so obviously something new for Apple Support to learn.
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How to use recovery files in recovery partition in hp dv6 notebook in windows 7
i am trying to recover my notebook to factory settings without using recovery disks in windows 7.
but using whenever i try to recver from the system recovery file in control panel, when the computer restarts it says that there is no bootable media or recovery disk.
while using recovery manager, it says system recovery is disabled try using recovery media creation but recovery media creation says that recovery media has already been created once and it cannot be created again.
whenever i open the recovery file in the partition hard drive it says, this partition is for recovery donot alter or delete this partition. it has covered about 10 gb space but whenver i open it the file is empty and hp logo appears with instructions that its is fixed for partition donot alter it.
can anyone tell what to do??
This question was solved.
View Solution.Having the hdd in Dynamic state breaks Recovery function. Converting bck to Basic should not delete your data...unless the data is on the extra partition you need to delete in order to get the hdd back to Basic.
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Weird problems with recovery partition
Hi. I just got a new X1 Carbon a few days ago. When trying to install Ubuntu, I messed up the bootmgr. At that point I still had the option F11 for recovery on startup, but choosing it did not give any results and after a restart, the option was gone. When researching the problem, I found this thread:
http://forums.lenovo.com/t5/ThinkVantage-Technologies/Need-help-with-recovery-partition-create-recov...
Since my recovery partition Q was untouched, the steps described in the thread allowed me to restore partitions S and C. So far so good, but now the problems start.
First, the letters of the partitions get messed up after every reboot. I assign Windows7_OS the letter C, SYSTEM_DRV gets S, and Lenovo_Recovery gets Q. Diskpart then lists the drives with correct letters. But after a reboot, they're back to D,C,E, respectively.
Then, when I boot the Windows recovery disk from a usb stick, it correctly recognizes that Windows is installed on drive D. It suggests that there are startup problems, which I tell it to fix. After the next reboot, it does not warn me about startup problems. When I then go to command prompt and enter
bootrec.exe /fixmbr
bootrec.exe /fixboot
then the Windows recovery disk commits suicide. It seems to attempt to fix its own bootmgr. At the moment, both usb stick and hard disk run with grub (Windows recovery on a multiboot installed by YUMI). After I run the commands above, the hard disk still runs with grub, but the usb stick now has bootmgr and fails to boot. I have tried this several times, each time recreating the Windows recovery disk with YUMI, and every time the same result.
F11 option is of course still gone. At this point I'm out of my wits. Any suggestions are welcome.
Solved!
Go to Solution.In the end I formatted and made a clean install. F11 Option is gone. Recovery partition is still untouched, but I don't think it will be used again. Followed this advice to install a fresh Windows 7 using a usb stick:
http://www.sevenforums.com/tutorials/219487-clean-reinstall-factory-oem-windows-7-a.html#post1839164
Since I did not have access to Windows with administrator rights, I had to use Ubuntu to create the bootable Windows stick:
http://cloud101.eu/blog/2012/03/24/create-a-windows-7-live-disk-from-ubuntu-linux/
The WiFi driver was not included in Windows, so I had to download that in another system, and install manually. From there I could then go online in Windows to download the remaining drivers from Lenovo (after the clean install there's a long list of unrecognized devices).
Since the laptop comes with 4 primary partitions preinstalled I had to merge the SYSTEM_DRV and the Windows7_OS partition in order to create an additional partition for Ubuntu. Then I installed Ubuntu and took control of the startup behavior using EasyBCD. -
650M Recovery partition delete my disk. How do the terminal command to create a new hidden in the Apple boot partition?
I managed to fix the problem. First I used Disk Utility to delete the NTFS partition. It hung during the process, so I quit it, and the partition was deleted anyway. Next, I used gdisk to change the partition type from 0700 to AF00 and AB00 for the Lion and Recovery partitions respectively. It worked and I can access the partitions under OSX again. Thanks, everybody, you've been super helpful.
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Problem installing Mavericks from my recovery partition of my computer
I don't know what's going on but for some reason each and every time I try to install mavericks from my recovery partition I get an error saying "OSX Mavericks failed to download" , then the text underneath that said "Use the purchases page to try again". This creates a problem for me because I can not access the Mac AppStore since I whipped my MacBook clean with the os along with it and am trying to clean install mavericks. So I was wondering how do I fix this because I am beginning to get extremely ****** off and frustrated.
Hi
I want to install mac osx Mavericks on a seagate internal raw hard . I downloaded "RecoveryDiskAssistant" and install it in a usb drive, before installing I made partition for new harddisk , and I stadted to install it through internet without problem,
But after 10% it says: ""Use the purchases page to try again"" . and after clicking okey it`s installing bar doesnt go forward(Most comments which I found was about app strore but in this step I have no access to app store) . could you please help me what to do? -
The recovery partition could not be found
I didn't know that partition magic is uncompatible withwin 7, so when i ran the program it asked me to FIX something....'YES' was my answer, then the recovery partition dissapeared. now when i open disk managment and try to click on properties of the recovery partition it shows me that message
(the operation failed to complete because the disk management console view is not up-to-date)
help please iwant to restore my recovery partitionHi,
You can order a replacement set of Recovery Discs using the link below - once you get these, backup all your personal files etc to an external device and use the discs to reinstall the operating system; this will also re-create the Recovery Partiton.
http://h10025.www1.hp.com/ewfrf/wc/document?docname=c00810334&cc=us&lc=en&dlc=en
If you have any problem with this link, order them directly from HP.
If you live in the US, contact HP Here.
If you are in another part of the world, start Here.
Regards,
DP-K
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