DV6747 - how to use HP System Recovery when F11 at boot won't work?

Hi guys,

Finally I got the laptop computer I ordered, a DV6747. The people at the store that sold it to me installed XP over Vista, but have kept the System Recovery partition. OK, I much rather use XP than Vista (apart DirectX10...).

Since I'll tweak with it a lot, I want to re-install Vista from the HP_Recovery partition and burn the System Recovery DVDs. Only problem is that pressing F11 key at boot won't work and the system boots to XP.

I talked to the people at the store and they said HP has a software that access HP_Recovery partition and can restore the system to it's original settings. Is this true? Has anyone used it before?

Finally, once I manage to recover the system and burn the DVDs, I plan to install XP SP3. Can anyone help with getting the right drivers?

Thanks in advance!

 

Use Hiran's boot cd or something, and then run Partition Magic, set the Recovery_Partition as the primary one, and you'll be able to access it...

Not necesarilly do you have to use that boot cd, but anything that would allow you to change the primary partition.

And yes, it does restore everything... I've used it many times on my dv2010eu...
but its only an "overwrite"....

 

Ben,

I've found Hiren's website. I'll try that... once I find a download link for it...

Thanks!

 

Alright, I'm sure it will work:

When you boot it up, remember to set the booting from CD 1st, then, inside Hiran's cd, select Partition Tools -> Partition Magic (or whichever)
Inside that, just select the Recovery_partition and right click it and set it to Primary, that will force the C:\ one to not boot until it is set again as primary...

you'll be able to boot on recovery partition, and perform whichever task you want to

hope it helps!

http://soft.softoogle.com/ap/hiren-s-bootcd-get-6916.shtml

oh and sorry, it was Hiren, not Hiran xD

 

Ben,

Got it! Burned an image and booted with it.

PartitionMagic Pro Server 8.05 (fancy isn't it?) shows the following (I'll try build a table here!).

Partition Type Size MB Used MB Unused MB Status Pri/Log
*: Unallocated 7.8 0.0 0.0 None Primary
*: Extended 226,243.5 226,243.5 0.0 None Primary
*: NTFS 226,243.5 11,206.2 215,037.3 None Logical
*:HP_RECOVERY NTFS 12,221.3 10,314.7 1,906.6 Active Primary

Oh boy... the table construct didn't work!

Anyway, what do I do now? Right-click the HP_RECOVERY partition and make it what?

Thanks!

 

i think thats it, just set it to active primary, and it should boot on that, if it doesnt, then the NTFS one needs to be hidden, just for this.