How To Activate F11 To Recover

Hi. I've had problems with my DV8000 and I've tried the Destructive Recovery but some files remains in the disk I guess. So, I formatted the main partition at my own, booting with a clean XP installation disks and that was succesfull.
So, when I tried to restart with the F11 to activate the recovery with the partition recovery nothing happened.
How can I restore the F11 to activate the Recovery Partition? At this moment the main partition is empty and formatted to reinstall the system.
Thanks in advance.

 

Do you have a System Recovery DVD?
If your F11 System Recovery Partition is missing or damaged, the full DVD recovery will put it back. I know, because I just did one. Then you could format the main partition and install clean with XP. Your F11 restore option would then work in the future. See what I mean. Just don't mess with that partition. I don't really know if you have damaged it, but I suspect.

 

Hi, any XP install rewrites the MBR (Master Boot Record) on its first restart which originally contains the F11 redirect code to boot from the recovery partition. I think the only option would be some utility that can rewrite the MBR again after you complete the XP install adding the functionality. Not sure this exists from HP though...

Edit: some people were mentioning that the quickplay boot recovery utility found here http://h10025.www1.hp.com/ewfrf/wc/...n&cc=us&lang=en&os=228&product=3224058&dlc=en can help with the F11 as well but I have not tried it myself.