ZenCoder Posted December 2, 2007 Share Posted December 2, 2007 I am trying to repair someone's HP DV2000 laptop. It came with Windows XP MCE, but someone attempted to upgrade it to Windows Vista and it went badly. Anyway the owner doesn't have restore discs, so normally I would just take a generic OEM CD and add the appropriate OEMBIOS files.However I notice that the recovery partition is still there, just no HP recovery software installed, either in windows or as a boot time utility.I was wondering if it was possible to simply reinstall the recovery software and recover from the recovery partition? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ponch Posted December 2, 2007 Share Posted December 2, 2007 HP recovery from partition.For some manufacturers (Acer for instance), there is a switch in Bios to enable/disable that possibility. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ZenCoder Posted December 2, 2007 Author Share Posted December 2, 2007 Unfortunately its not actually in the BIOS, its a boot time utility which was removed during the vista install.Also as I mentioned HP Tools is not present. What I didn't mention is that Vista is broken to the point that there is no USB, no internet.I was hoping there was a bootable CD/DVD or floppy that can be used to run the recovery software.The laptop doesn't have a floppy, but I can make a bootable CD that emulates one. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ponch Posted December 2, 2007 Share Posted December 2, 2007 Have you tried hitting F10 at boot ? Or making the recovery partition active ? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ZenCoder Posted December 2, 2007 Author Share Posted December 2, 2007 Yes I tried F11, but that option exists as a program in the MBR and was as I said absent from the system.---Checking out the recovery partition from linux it looks like nothing more than a stripped down version of Windows XP, maybe a modified version of Windows PE?So up in some boot loader software and added the recovery partition as an option.My guess was on the money and it completely restored everything to the factory defaults including the F11 boot utility which will come in handy next time someone needs to restore the system.Anyway its 100% restored to original condition and I didn't have to pay HP and wait 5-7 days or install everything from scratch.--So if you are in a similar situation check out the hard drives with a Knoppix DVD and see if the recovery partition looks bootable, then install a boot loader to boot it.The F11 utility seems to be nothing more than a OS selector with only one choice - the recovery partition. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jaclaz Posted December 3, 2007 Share Posted December 3, 2007 The F11 utility seems to be nothing more than a OS selector with only one choice - the recovery partition. Yes, FYI check this:http://www.911cd.net/forums//index.php?showtopic=18480jaclaz Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ZenCoder Posted December 3, 2007 Author Share Posted December 3, 2007 Neat, you can trick the OEM's F whatever partition booting utility to boot something other than their recovery program.Personally I quick using Ghost when (in my option) True Image surpassed it in terms of quality, performance and features. True Image already has support for launching at boot time by pressing F11. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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