HP Pavillion Recovery

[H.P. Stink]

Can someone help me. I have HP pavillion 7924 and it doesnt startup i need to use HP's recovery tool in order to restore the computer to its factory defaults problem is the pc wont start and according to HP the tool is on the hard drive (after reading some websites). I dont want to call HP as theres a massive charge to sort this - does anyone know how i can get around this? even if i reformat the drive and use the recovery tools on the hard drive.

Your help is mostly appreciated

[stanstan]

I would put in another hard drive as master and your old one as slave.

Load operation system onto new hard drive. All your data will still be on the old drive as slave. you will have to reload all your programs and drivers if new. not a trivial task but workable.

If you have the original factory ROM please use it.

[dman]

recovery may be on a fat32 partition on drive. do you have a boot floppy? one should have come with the machine if this is the case. else get one somewhere and boot from that and see if you can access the recovery tools.

[PaCiNoLiFe]

Can someone help me. I have HP pavillion 7924 and it doesnt startup i need to use HP's recovery tool in order to restore the computer to its factory defaults problem is the pc wont start and according to HP the tool is on the hard drive (after reading some websites). I dont want to call HP as theres a massive charge to sort this - does anyone know how i can get around this? even if i reformat the drive and use the recovery tools on the hard drive.

Your help is mostly appreciated

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

I agree with the info stanstan has brought to your attention. I am a certified technician and this is a common trick we use in the field to recover otherwise lost data from a crashed HDD. If this seems to hard for you to perform yourself I would suggest calling HP and inquire about buying there Factory Restore CD which as the name suggest will restore your computer to the state in which you recieved it new out of the box. This method will however lose any data you have on the HDD so I would try stanstan method first it is not as difficult as it sounds. Good luck Also you might want to try a Repair from the Windows XP CD. I could walk you through it if you need help.

[lesmich50]

Normal logic doesn't apply to HP imbedded Windows XP.

Start the process in safe mode. When you get a black screen turning the PC on press F8 and go into safe mode. You'll find the system restore there. You'll have 2 options:

1. System recovery for MS, and

2. System recovery for HP. There are no restore points in safe mode for HP so a full destructive recovery is the only option. This allows you to go back to factory settings.

I agree with you that engaging HP on the Help line is both expensive and fruitless as their technicians are mere plebes.

Best of luck

Mitch

disgruntled HP user