jjawm

I am currently working on the same problem, with exception that the contents of the recovery partition was deleted. Found out this, first have hp total care installed, then install the hp backup & recovery software, create entire drive backup and create recovery discs usually two or three dvds, then recover using the dvds. From what I've gathered recovering will reload the partition with the necessary software and bootable partition. If it works you'll see me do this, , jja Should get back to you in about a couple of hours, if it works like it is supposed to I'll post links to the software locations, good luck all, jja Well, bad news, this will not work for a number of reasons, discovered that there are a number of problems with the soft-think (soft-id***) software, the worst being you could lose most of the data backed up with it. Best case you could recover most but not worth the chance. I have a second hp to steal some files & programs from and will approach from another angle. How ever you have the error screen from some updates (black with the error: winload.exe missing or corrupt in windows/system32/...) you can copy the winload.exe & winloadresume.exe from the windows/system32/boot/ to windows/system32/ folder and it will boot and configure the updates and run. One problem down and more to go, onward & upward....jja