I have a HP Pavilion dv2910us that I am try to recover using the HP recovery disks.

Question

I have a HP Pavilion dv2910us that I am try to recover using the HP Vista Home Premium recovery disks. Recovery disk #1 worked and prompted me to insert disk #2, disk #2 was inserted and ran until only 20% of installing original content was reached. CD/DVD rom light on lower left of the notebook is not lit, wireless light is lit, running. Program ran slowly to reach the 20% mark, over three hours at one or two percentage points at a time. Then for the next 12 hours nothing, no keys or commands on the keyboard have been touched. Please advise next step, thank you.

Answer 1

Hi:
If you can't get the recovery disks to work (I can't help you there), and you can still read all 25 characters of your Vista product key on the bottom of your PC, you can make your own Vista installation disk and use the product key to activate it.
Here's how:
If you're up to a slight but rewarding challenge you can make your own if you can read your 25 character Vista product key on the PC.
Just download the 3 files you need at the link below, and read all of the instructions to create a bootable DVD installation disk using imageburn.
Disregard the part of the text under the first screen shot about "extract the files to the Vista folder."
The files were already extracted to that folder when you ran the X14.exe file by reading the text on top of the first screen shot.
The other thing I noticed is on the 4th screen shot, where it shows Developer ID Microsoft Corporation. I had to type Microsoft Corporation in myself, and then the other codes automatically populated.
When I went to compile the ISO file, ImageBurn gave a message that about a WIM file and ISO, and if I wanted to burn it in a different format.
I selected No, make the ISO file.
It was not that hard to do. I burned both the 64 bit disk and the 32 bit disk in case I ever need them.
I tested both of them on my hp dc7100 CMT desktop PC, they worked perfectly.
When you enter the product key, it knows what version of Vista you have.
http://en.community.dell.com/support-forums/software-os/w/microsoft_os/3317.2-3-microsoft-windows-v....
After you successfully install Vista, you can then install the drivers from your PC's support and driver page.
Paul