Press F11 for Emergency Recovery

hey guys

recently upped the HDD in my HP NX8420 to a 160gb from 80gb

now it no longer says 'press F11 for emergency recovery" when i boot up before entering windows, instead it sits there for about 20 seconds and just goes to the windows splash screen.

how can i get this back? if not for the ability to recover easily after a catastrophic system failure, its so i dont have to wait 20 seconds with a flashing cursor before it boots into windows...i have the original DVD restore discs and i used acronis to transfer the recovery partition over intact...although i did make that partition as small as possible.

 

um your 80GB had a hidden partition which had the restore discs on it, you removed the drive, you removed the recovery. i think the partition had to be of a standard size, the same as the one in the 80GB and not modified.

 

curiously i did that too, as i still have the 80gb drive in a caddy with the partitions intact. made sure it was the same size as it was on the 80gb drive, and i still just get a blinking cursor for 20 sec before the XP boot screen comes up. when i made acronis clone the disk proportionally, same deal again...

i have the original recovery DVDs that i burned when i first started the notebook; if i were to recover from them onto the new HDD, would that solve my problems?

 

Your old drive had a hidden recovery parttion if you want to get it back put the old hd back in

 

The only way to recover the "F11" option is to do a full recovery from the DVD. I have done this and it will give you back the option, but you'll lose your data. This is because of some custom MBR that HP has created that doesn't seem to be preserved whenever it has been modified. I'm not aware of any hacks to circumvent this.

 

prob is i wanted to put the old 80gb in my presario v3142au, so it cant just sit around forever.

chrisxx, i shall do as you say, because i would really like to have that option - i dont see myself upgrading from this 160gb drive anytime soon.

 

Backup first!

 

thats really strange because i completely formatted my drive, got rid of the recovery partition and the preinstalled vista, and did a fresh install of xp and vista (dual boot). i still get the hp screen with the f11 and other options.

 

You guys sure the F11 option isnt controlled from the BIOS?

 

A little off subject. If I was to get a 160 GB HD for my F572 (from 80 GB to 160 GB), could I use the "system restore" disc after the new HD is installed and formatted or it would not recognize the new HD at all since it's a system restore disk?

I do have a fresh copy of "XP professional" but I'm starting to enjoy "Vista" a bit more and learn my way around. Plus I don't feel like downloading and searching for drivers off the web.

 

folks,

I really need the set of recovery dics... My don't work(error) and my C: drive has been formatted by my little brother... Anyone out there has the recovery dics set please contact me.. I'll pay for the postage... Really appreciated.

[email protected]

 

In your first post you mention Acronis. True Image has a feature you can enable called Startup Recovery Manager, which does the exact same thing. You can create a smaller partition and keep one acronis image right there on your HD and also have the ability to recover from external media. The acronis option will offer you more flexibility than the original HP recovery option.