HP system recovery possible w/ replaced main board?

Season's Greetings!

So I have a four-year-old HP Win 7 laptop that I'd like to do a full System Recovery/Factory Reset on, just to clean it up a bit.

I have both the Recovery partition on the original internal SSD and a USB recovery drive which I created according to HP's instructions when the laptop was new.

The thing is, this machine had its main board replaced by HP a few years ago - could this cause problems with system recovery?

AFAIK the main board is identical to the old one but I'm unable to say whether the HP technician matched the tattoo/fingerprint of the old MB with the new one. I wasn't provided with a new recovery media.

If I initiate the recovery process, and the Recovery partition and the USB recovery drive both turn out to be non-functional, will the program prompt me BEFORE it starts to irreversibly wipe out the old system? Will I be able to roll back to where I was?

Thanks again.

 

Was the board the same board hardware wise? If it was different then you will have to find those missing drivers or contact HP to help you here.

 

Same processor, same GPU, no discernible difference in operation.

It's not about missing drivers; it's about whether or not the new main board was tattooed to match the old one by the service technician. The System Recovery compares the current hardware tattoos with the ones on record and if they don't match it's a no-go.

Now if I knew for sure that the board was not matched, the only way to recover the system would be to get a "clean" Windows media and then download all drivers from HP. That's not really an option for me, I'd rather leave the system as it is.

I could just initiate the recovery and see what happens but if it formats C before it tells me "hey man these codes don't match"... I'd be screwed.

 

Short answer: Most likely no.

To make sure you have to find out which type of activation you use now.

1 - Open command prompt (search for CMD in the start menu), or, press Windows key + R for Run.

2 - Enter:

slmgr.vbs -dli

and hit enter. Compare the output window with my pic and see if it says OEM_SLP.

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Given that you have used Windows 7 on it since the swap there should be no issue. Windows 7 SLP factory keys aren't machine/motherboard specific.
In worst case you'll have to use the COA key on the underisde of the laptop, but that's highly unlikely.

That is not required in your situation, no new media needed.

If you still feel uncertain, there are additional things you can do to make sure that the activation goes as expected,
like back up the activation: https://www.raymond.cc/blog/backup-and-restore-vista-oem-activation-license/
or pop in a spare HDD and try out the recovery media on that one, while keeping your current HDD untouched.

 

If it boots up then no, I bought a brand new HP board and installed my self, found out that only HP had the key -special encryption code to flash the bios up too put the serial number of the main board in the bios, no serial number no boot, I sent it in free, there shipping and box, they flashed the bios and sent it back, no problem with recovery partition on the disk drive, I bought the board from one of there channel suppliers so the warranty was good and they did the flash under warranty.

 

Okay I definitely have both a four-digit "System Board ID" and a 14-digit "System Board CT Number" in BIOS - they're very much like real codes and not just a bunch of zeros. So I should be good to go right?

edit: typo

 

All boards have a serial number. The easiest way to make sure that BIOS has the SLP/SLIC certificate (the one that HP added to 3Fees board, simply put) is to run the command I described above.

 

I'm happy to announce that I just ran a full factory reset from the D partition and everything went smoothly.

So there is hope for HP owners wanting to recover the system after a MoBo swap, depending on...

1) whether the HP technician coded the board to match the old one and 2) whether you are recovering it by a USB recovery stick or the D partition (the latter is preferable).

 

So was this whole post to get others involved in your fear os to weather the technician did the motherboard swap properly? Sheesh what a strange thread.

 

Thank you for your contribution. Bless your heart!

 

They don't use individual codes. All HP boards have one of two existing certificates, if having one.

Anyone who runs that command above on a HP computer that was sold with Windows 7 Professional (and still use) will get the same key ending as I got. They all have the same SLP key.