HP's newer (Win7) Recovery Partition Help Required.

Hi Guys, I have been reading the help & advice on this forum for a long time now and I know there are plenty of experts out there that may be able to help me on this one.

Background : HDD failure on a Windows 7 Compaq Presario CQ61. No recovery CD's were created The machine is running Windows 7.

Analysis : The HDD makes mechanical noises when trying to read the "C:" partition and further software testing on the HDD confirms that part of the drive is dead. However; The recovery partition is still readable.

Solution : Normally, I would clone the recovery partition onto a new drive, and manually start the recovery procedure by extracting the contents of D:\PRELOAD\BASE.WIM to C: using Hirens Boot disc and 7zip tool. This would be extracted to the root of C:
After a fix to the MBR and a restart of the laptop, then the recovery procedure would be completed.

Result : I tried this on this machine and 4 folders were created in the root of C: instead of the normal 1 folder.
It would appear that the recovery partition on this machine contains more than 1 version of windows.... I.E. Windows 7 basic AND windows 7 Home Premium. I can also see MANY references to AMD in the folder names (This particular compaq is Intel based) - I am assuming that maybe there is also an OS for AMD based machines from the same line.

QUESTION : Does anyone have any Info on this ? Anyone tried this method or have a working method I can use please ?

The "New" HP Recovery partition has defiantly changed since the Vista version, I just need to work out what I need to extract to successfully "Clone" things back when recovery disc's have not been made.......

Can anyone out there Help ?

Kind Regards,

Tim.

 

Do you urgently need all the HP software? If not you could go for a far more cleaner installation of Windows 7. The only thing you need then is a retail copy of Windows 7 (same version as the one pre-installed) and install that.

 

Clone the entire hard drive to the new one (all partitions), then run the HP restore using F10

 

@Aijelt, personally I would have just done the easy thing and re-installed Seven from a retail disc but this machine is a customers and they want it back to how they bought it so the retail way is not an option.

@MoabUtah, its not possible to clone the entire HDD as C: is unreadable and just returns a "cannot read source" error no matter what software you try to use to copy it. (I tried Ghost, Acronis, and even a simple DOS based copier all to no avail - They all failed at the unreadable sectors where the HDD made the mechanical noises)

In the end, I manually reinstalled using the Hirens disc and got several versions of windows. I picked the version that had the correct drivers and software in the SWsetup folder and then ran the "Create recovery CD's" utility (Which has also changed since Vista) - It created a full set of recovery discs and I was then able to wipe the HDD again and re-install from the discs.

I still havent worked out what has actually changed in the recovery partition but I am sure I will given a few more Win7 laptops to work on.

Anyhow, thanks for the advice, at least it's all up and running again and my customer is happy

Regards.

Tim.

 

"In the end, I manually reinstalled using the Hirens disc "

If you have time, A step by step tutorial would be nice.

 

I'd be more than happy to..... Sadly, I haven't had a similar machine in with a similar problem since then so I am no more the wiser !

I had no time to "Test" what I did as my customer needed the laptop back quick smart.

The normal HP partition is dead easy to unlock and "Force" a recovery on a laptop with similar spec even when the model number doesnt match etc but this new one - Well, it still has me stumped........ Time and experience will revel the answer to it