Thinking of reloading Vista on my machine. Proper steps to use the recovery partition?

Hi, I have:
HP Pavillion DV9700 Entertainment Notebook
Windows Vista 32 SP1
I'm thinking of reloading Vista from scratch and want to make sure of the proper steps to use for the on board Recovery partition that HP put on here for me.
It is called: HP_RECOVERY (E Total Size: 12G, Free Space 1.97G
Any advice.
I may not do this, but if i can't fix my issues i will have to do this and want to know how.
This question was solved.
View Solution.

Hi,
Please use the following instructions, it will bring your machine back to day 1 (given no hardware problem):
http://h10025.www1.hp.com/ewfrf/wc/document?docname=c00809678&lc=en&cc=us&dlc=en&product=3552675&rul...
Regards.
BH
**Click the KUDOS thumb up on the left to say 'Thanks'**
Make it easier for other people to find solutions by marking a Reply 'Accept as Solution' if it solves your problem.

Similar Messages

Restoring Vista's MBR so F11 actually loads the recovery partition?

Hey guys, I have a Pavilion m8277c that came out of the factory with Vista 32-bit. I know from experience that by dual booting and installing another OS, either with another version of Windows (newer or older) or Linux, overwriting the MBR will cause F11 to not work in loading the recovery partition at startup (in fact, in the past I tried a Windows 7 beta and when I decided to wipe my hard drive clean some time after that, I had to use the recovery disks that I thankfully made before doing this experiment, as my recovery partition was nonfunctional). Right now I have a triple boot of Windows Vista, Windows XP, and Ubuntu Linux, with Linux's bootloader (GRUB) occupying the MBR, which could load any of the three OS's.
Now, I decided to get rid of Linux altogether and wipe my hard drive clean again (I keep all my files on an external hard drive and I don't have much software to reinstall, plus I like keeping my system as lightweight as possible). I know that I can't use the recovery partition again this time, but I was wondering, that since from now on, I'm only going to be booting a Windows OS that's older than the factory preinstalled one, I can use Vista's bootloader to select between Vista and XP. I know that since Vista was preinstalled and so the recovery disks install it first, XP has to be installed afterwards. XP's bootloader will occupy the MBR and will not recognize Vista and also will cut off the link to the recovery partition again. I've heard of this program called EasyBCD that has been updated to support XP and restore Vista's boot record (source) so I believe I could actually restore Vista's MBR without having to use the recovery disks to fix them.
I just want to know that if I were to restore Vista's bootloader by running EasyBCD, would that also fix the link to the recovery partition so that when I press F11 on bootup, the recovery partition would load? Or would I have to run my recovery disks to restore a custom MBR, or is it not possible at all to restore the recovery partition's functionality after a second OS has been installed after Vista? I could try it out since I believe my recovery disks are still functional, but I don't have much time right now for troubleshooting, so it would be better if someone else has already confirmed that it works and I could go ahead without issue.
Thanks!
(by the way, I know that Microsoft doesn't like it if we make more than one copy of a recovery disk, since they can install Windows on a blank HDD on any computer, but will copying a recovery DVD with a DVD burner allow the new set to work? I've had my old set for a while and I fear that they'll fail soon. Maybe there's a way to hack HP's recovery disk creation program so that we could make a second set?)

Making a copy of your Recovery Disks is a good idea.I have done it myself and can verify they work. I have also used EasyBCD on a dual boot machine and found it quite easy.However I don't know whether F11 for Recovery is restored.I tend to doubt it,since F11 is looking for partition 2 of 2 partitions to boot from and there are 3. It would be an interesting experiment-let me know if you try it.
Another option that usually works is using Disk Management to mark the recovery partition as active>>
1.Right-click on "Computer" icon and select manage.
2.This will launch the Microsoft Management Console.
3.On the left side of the MMC, click on "Disk Management" and it will show you all of the partitions.
4.Right-click on the "HP Recovery" partition and select "Mark as Active Partition."
5.When the warning prompt appears, select "Yes" - Reboot and it will automatically boot into the Recovery Manager (without pressing F11).
******Clicking the Thumbs-Up button is a way to say -Thanks!.******
**Click Accept as Solution on a Reply that solves your issue to help others**

What are the steps for using the backup files to reload data to my blackberry curve (8310, i think)?

What are the steps for using the backup files to reload data to my blackberry curve (8310, i think)?

Connect BB to PC. On 'Desktop Manager'>Backup & Restore tab>Click Restore. Double click .ipd file (backup file created from Desktop Manager).

I want to know about time machine if i can use the hard drive that i use for time machine back up as a normal hard drive too or if it's only for time machine

I want to know about time machine if i can use the hard drive that i use for time machine back up as a normal hard drive too or if it's only for time machine
and if it yes i want to know if i have 1TB hard disk to use the 500gb for time machine and the other 500gb for normal use

thank you very much because i am considering to buy the porsche design hard disk 1TB and i want to have it for normal use and for time machine is a pitty to give 1TB for back up only again thanks and i know seperate the back and the working jobs are better but the i have to have 2 hardisks and i want only 1

Disk Utility can't repair Time Machine + HDneeds to be repaired using the Recovery HD

Time Machine does back up. In fact it does not even show up on my desktop. I used didk utility and msg I got is below.
I am in a place where I cannot even buy a flash drive. My harddisk is malfunctioning. Its hard to restart from the 'sleep' mode, so I have it on all the time. What can I do to fix this? HELP!
This is what Disk Utility says...
Verify and Repair volume “Time Machine Backups”
Checking file systemChecking Journaled HFS Plus volume.
Detected a case-sensitive volume.
Checking extents overflow file.
Checking catalog file.
Incorrect number of thread records
Incorrect number of thread records
Checking multi-linked files.
Checking catalog hierarchy.
Invalid directory item count
(It should be 163758 instead of 163846)
Incorrect folder count in a directory (id = 18)
(It should be 0 instead of 88)
Checking extended attributes file.
Invalid sibling link
Rebuilding extended attributes B-tree.
The volume Time Machine Backups could not be repaired.
Disk Utility can’t repair this disk. Back up as many of your files as possible, reformat the disk, and restore your backed-up files.
Ref the HD:
Verifying volume “Macintosh HD”
Checking file systemPerforming live verification.
Checking Journaled HFS Plus volume.
Checking extents overflow file.
Checking catalog file.
Checking multi-linked files.
Checking catalog hierarchy.
Checking extended attributes file.
Checking volume bitmap.
Volume bitmap needs minor repair for orphaned blocks
Checking volume information.
Invalid volume free block count
(It should be 78219814 instead of 78056382)
The volume Macintosh HD was found corrupt and needs to be repaired.
Error: This disk needs to be repaired using the Recovery HD. Restart your computer, holding down the Command key and the R key until you see the Apple logo. When the Mac OS X Utilities window appears, choose Disk Utility.

AMBKK wrote:
The volume Time Machine Backups could not be repaired.
Disk Utility can’t repair this disk. Back up as many of your files as possible, reformat the disk, and restore your backed-up files.
Your backups may be hopelessly corrupted, but there's a chance an (expensive) 3rd-party Disk Repair utility might be able to fix them. For the moment, eject and disconnect the TM drive and try to repair the internal.
Error: This disk needs to be repaired using the Recovery HD. Restart your computer, holding down the Command key and the R key until you see the Apple logo. When the Mac OS X Utilities window appears, choose Disk Utility.
Do that first.
If that's not clear, see the yelow box in #6 of Using Disk Utility.

What is the proper way to use the write method?

What is the proper way to use the OutputStreams write method? I know the flush() method is automatically called after the write but i cant seem to get any output
to a file. The char array contains characters and upon completion of the for loop the contents of the array is printed out, so there is actually data in the array. But write dosnt seem to do squat no matter what i seem to do. Any suggestions?
import java.io.*;
public class X{
public static void main(String[] args){
try{
FileReader fis = new FileReader("C:\\Java\\Test.txt"); //read chars
FileWriter fw = new FileWriter("C:\\Java\\Test1.txt"); //read chars
File f = new File("C:\\Java\\Test.txt");
char[] charsRead = new char[(int)f.length()];
while(true){
int i = fis.read(charsRead);
if(i == -1) break;
// fw.write(charsRead); this wont work
// but there is infact chars in the char Array?
for(int i = 0; i < charsRead.length -1 ; ++i){
System.out.print(charRead);
}catch(Exception e){System.err.println(e);}

Sorry to have to tell you this guys but all of the above are broken.
First of all... you should all take a good look at what the read() method actually does.
http://java.sun.com/j2se/1.3/docs/api/java/io/InputStream.html#read(byte[], int, int)
Pay special attension to this paragraph:
Reads up to len[i] bytes of data from the input stream into an array of bytes. An attempt is made to read as many as len[i] bytes, but a smaller number may be read, possibly zero. The number of bytes actually read is returned as an integer.
In other words... when you use read() and you request say 1024 bytes, you are not guaranteed to get that many bytes. You may get less. You may even get none at all.
Supposing you want to read length bytes from a stream into a byte array, here is how you do it.int bytesRead = 0;
int readLast = 0;
byte[] array = new byte[length];
while(readLast != -1 && bytesRead < length){
readLast = inputStream.read(array, bytesRead, length - bytesRead);
if(readLast != -1){
bytesRead += readLast;
}And then the matter of write()...
http://java.sun.com/j2se/1.3/docs/api/java/io/OutputStream.html#write(byte[])
write(byte[] b) will always attempt to write b.length bytes, no matter how many bytes you actually filled it with. All you C/C++ converts... forget all about null terminated arrays. That doesn't exist here. Even if you only read 2 bytes into a 1024 byte array, write() will output 1024 bytes if you pass that array to it.
You need to keep track of how many bytes you actually filled the array with and if that number is less than the size of the array you'll need pass this as an argument.
I'll make another post about this... once and for all.
/Michael

Can I change the software in the recovery partition from Vista to Win 7?

After doing a clean install of Windows 7 in a used Tecra A9 I just bought, I would like to replace the factory installed Vista Business software within the recovery partition with Win 7 code so as to be able to boot Win 7 in that partition in an emergency. How can I do that, and are there any serious downsides to getting rid of the "factory installed stuff"? Thanks in advance.

In the Creative Cloud Application you can change in Preferences the App language. Then you can download and install additional the other language.
With Photoshop you can now go to Preferences > User Interface and switch between all installed and available languages.

Time machine restore destroys the recovery partition

Hi
I wanted to restore my Lion installation with a Time Machine backup. So I restarted the computer with cmd+r and choose Time Machine restore.
After the restore everything works except FileVault. I can't enable it and when I try I get the error message "Can't enable because recovery partition is not available.".
How can I fix this? The restore from Time Machine works perfect and all files are at my computer but I can't use FileVault. And when I try to reboot with cmd+r so will it get the rescue information from the internet instead of the disk. So I'm thinking that the fault is that Time Machine deletes the rescue partition or disables it in the restore.
How can I restore from Time Machine and later use FileVault?

Reinstalling Lion worked. First restore and later reinstall... maybe not as good as advertised but it works.
Pondini I'm evaluating TM as backup software so there was nothing wrong with the installation just I wanted to test to make a restore so the day when it doesn't work I know what can be done.
Sadly I'm not that impressed about Apples Time Machine at the moment.

Time Machine, External Hard drive, and the Windows Partition

Is it possible for me to back up my mac with Time machine, and also back up my windows partition on the same HD? I just got the External HD today, so I'm very new at this. Thanks for your help.

Time machine does not work with windows drives.
however the way I have backed up my bootcamp partition is to use diskutility to make a dmg of the windows partition. I then only make regular backups of my user account on the windows partition.
You could partition the new external drive and make 1 partition hfs+ and the other fat32. Then when booted into windows it will see the fat32 partition on the external drive. Then you can carry out backups from within windows to that partition.
Timemachine will backup your mac partition with no problems.

Time machine not deleting old backups of recovery partition

I have a Mac Mini running Lion Server. I have an external disk partitioned with a space for network backups and a smaller partition for backing up the server itself. The server has a 160GB disk, it is only using 29.27GB, the partition for backing up the server is 152GB (it's what was left over after creating the partition for the network backups). I figured since I'm only using about 30GB, 152GB should be plenty of space. However after 3 months of use I get the error "the backup is too large for the backup disk". In the past I have formatted the partition and restarted the backups, however it always fills up after 3 months. This time I decided to dig into it a bit more. I looked to see what was available in my backup, it only has one previous restore point. I browsed the disk and opened the backups.backupdb folder, checked the size of the folder with the computer name, it is only 9.44GB. I was wondering where all of the space went so I enabled hidden files, I found the .RecoverySets folder and found it was taking up 141.95GB. I looked at the recovery sets, there are 295 copies of com.apple.recovery.boot which all seem to contain the following files:
.disk_label                         749b
BaseSystem.chunklist       2KB
BaseSystem.dmg              454.6MB
boot.efi                              864KB
com.apple.Boot.plist          431b
kernelcache                       24.1MB
PlatformSupport.plist         2KB
SystemVersion.plist           478b
Of those files, the only file not dated Aug 11, Oct 6 or 12, 2011 is com.apple.Boot.plist which has a date that corresponds to when the backup was performed. These backups go all the way back to Jan 30, the last time I formatted the partition, but the user data backups only go back to the 27th and it hasn't been able to complete a backup since.
I thought Time Machine was supposed to only backup data that had changed since the last backup, and delete old revisions when space is running low, it seems that it is copying more than just the data that changed since the last backup and only deleting old revisions of user data, not system data. Is there a way to fix this permanently?

See C18 in the first linked article. Also, your backup drive should be 2-4 times your hard drive capacity.
Time Machine Troubleshooting
Time Machine Troubleshooting Problems

I want to install Windows 7 in bootcamp on my imac with Lion 10.7, but only have a Windows 7 upgrade disk. I also have a full Vista. Can I install in bootcamp using the Windows 7 upgrade disk? If so, what do I need to know about how?

Hi,
I want to install Windows 7 on my imac in bootcamp. I have a windows 7 upgrade disk and a full vista disk. Normally on a PC I would install Vista, then upgrade to Windows 7. I see that bootcamp 4 only supports Windows 7.
Can I install the Windows 7 upgrade disk without first installing Vista? Will this work in bootcamp?
Thanks,
Jim

Install 7. Don't bother with applying drivers and such, just reboot again from DVD and install again, it will see the existing system and this time activation will be possible.
Vista is mess, takes longer etc. Hope you have SP1 version of 7. And for Vista, only SP2+ are even supported now, by MS.

I have just bought a new mac book pro with lion. I have a Ibook g4 with the latest 10.4 and I can't get the migration assistant to work the pro still says to update the g4 machine and I have used the latest update.

I can't seam to get the migration to work between my g4 running 10.4 with all the upgrades including migration assistant 1.0.6 to talk to my new Pro.
The pro tells me to upgrade the g4's migration assistant and that has been done as much as I can find.

Hi 'baltwo'
Thank you for your link, I already had been on this particular website this afternoon. they only discuss problems in the application and nothing about how the MS Office application installation does disturb Mac OS.
Or have I missed a special comment there?
In any case many thanks, trioloGo

I have what I think is adobe 11 - I need a website link to use the application.

I have copy of the purchase invoice but the software is not specified in a manner I can recognise. it is basic software that cost £16.11 at the time and merely allows conversion to and from pdf / word. Access is through one of adobe websites but I do not have the link - anyone any ideas as it is not obvious?

Sustaining success through natural innovation
Achieving more, with less, more easily
What is “spammy”? – I was able to access this application to convert docs through the specific website but I have lost the link
Kind regards,
Pete Middleton
SenseAble Solutions
p.s. BBC Presenter & Celebrity Janey Lee Grace endorses A SenseAble Friend as “Awesome & Innovative”. Check it out and get one <http://www.asenseablefriend.com/> here
<http://www.asenseablefriend.com/> www.aSenseAbleFriend.com
mob : 07973 363 545
tel : 44 (0) 1845 597 804
Confidentiality: This e-mail and its attachments are intended for the above named only and may be confidential. If they have come to you in error you must take no action based on them, nor must you copy or show them to anyone; please reply to this e-mail and highlight the error.
Security Warning: Please note that this e-mail has been created in the knowledge that Internet e-mail is not a 100% secure communications medium. We advise that you understand and observe this lack of security when e-mailing us.
Viruses: Although we have taken steps to ensure that this e-mail and attachments are free from any virus, we advise that in keeping with good computing practice the recipient should ensure they are actually virus free and maintain up to date and adequate virus-checking software. We accept no liability for any damage due to virus transmission or infection, however caused.
SenseAble Solutions Limited is a limited company registered in England and Wales under company number 05255829.

Vista recovery partition

After clean installing Windows 7 on my Pavilion dv5 - Vista, I saved the "Windows.old" folder and the
"Vista recovery partition" on to an external harddrive, before deleting both on my laptop.
I never made any recovery disks, but would like to go back to Vista using the externally saved Vista partition and Windows.old folder.
How can I create recovery disks using the recovery partition / files on my external hard drive??
I do hope that there is a way to do this....
Any help would be appreciated!!;-)
THANKS

sijyb00 wrote:
See, the the thing is, I DID make the recovery cd... but it isn't working. From my understanding, the cd uses the information from the recovery partition to restore Windows? Correct me if I'm wrong. Every time I boot up the cd it detects no OS and when I click continue, it begins the installation and immediately says Installation cancelled, missing files, something like C:\win.int is missing.
So the recovery cd is not working. I called Toshiba and from what I could understand from the horrible english, was that they would charge me for another recovery cd... which I don't need, because I have one. Or send in my laptop for "repair." They said it was my hard drive. Which is complete bull**bleep**, when windows failed I ran a linux os on it perfectly fine, so it is not my hard drive.
Anyone have any ideas on how I can fix this? I have a product key for vista which I PAID for when I bought the laptop... I don't think it's fair to have to buy it over again for $100-200
No, the recovery disks don't rely on anything on the hard drive. From what you say, either you are not booting from the optical drive, or the disks indeed are faulty.
The last I knew, replacement disks were $25. See the sticky at the top of the General Discussion topic for details.
There have been a lot of reports of problems with recovery disks, so I'm a bit surprised that Toshiba won't ship you replacements at no charge. Might be worth another try, and an attempt to get to the next tech level.

Reloading VISTA Using Recovery Disks

I have a Lenovo 3000 N Laptop, Model 0768 A52.
The hard drive is failing - corruption errors, failed check disk results, etc.
I plan to install a new hard drive but before I do are there any instructions or guidance on using the Recovery Disks I already made from the machine? What about drivers?
I would prefer a step by step process for reinstalling VISTA on the new hard drive.
Thanks!

enhayden, welcome to the forum,
the recovery discs will install the hard drive to the original factory state including all drivers.
You need to boot from the first cd you created and follow the instructions.
I hope you were able to get your important files copied from the failing drive.
Hope this helps
Andy ______________________________________
Please remember to come back and mark the post that you feel solved your question as the solution, it earns the member + points
Did you find a post helpfull? You can thank the member by clicking on the star to the left awarding them Kudos Please add your type, model number and OS to your signature, it helps to help you. Forum Search Option T430 2347-G7U W8 x64, Yoga 10 HD+, Tablet 1838-2BG, T61p 6460-67G W7 x64, T43p 2668-G2G XP, T23 2647-9LG XP, plus a few more. FYI Unsolicited Personal Messages will be ignored.
Deutsche Community Comunidad en Español English Community Русскоязычное Сообщество
PepperonI blog

Thinking of reloading Vista on my machine. Proper steps to use the recovery partition?

Similar Messages

Maybe you are looking for