Manually recover from the recovery partition

Hi,

I bought a laptop with Windows 7. I have already done 5 times a recovery to factory settings using the recovery partition. It worked perfectly.

But then I bought the Windows 8 license for just 15usd and installed it. It was working fine, but I noticed that Windows 8 was not for me. Now I want to get back to Windows 7 using the recovery partition. How can I do that ?

The recovery partition is intact. How to run it in order to get back to factory settings ? (as I can no longer do the F8 during boot and then select recover from recovery partition)


My investigation: I have searched on this forum for a solution. I have learned that the .wim inside my recovery partition can be deployed using the file 'imagex.exe' that you can find in 'Windows Automated Installation Kit (Windows AIK)'.
1- I have downloaded the 'Windows Automated Installation Kit (Windows AIK)' and extracted the 'imagex.exe' file.
2- I have boot my PC in Console mode, then I have formatted the C:\ drive and then launched the command:
imagex /apply d:\Install.wim 1 c:
3- The command was running fine, and then the factory content was properly copied in C:\
4- Unfortunately when I reboot the laptop, booting does not work, I am stuck on a black screen. Help, what can I do ?

 

How do you recover from your recovery partition ?