Need assistance to save the HP factory partition

[Immortal]

Hi Everyone,
I had a HP PC running windows vista home basic, it crashed and was not
able to boot in vista. Startup repair or safe mode did not work, so
inorder to save data I installed vista business on top of it. The data
is recovered and now when I try to boot to the factory restore it does
not work, noticed in msconfig under boot.ini tab there is no boot
record to the factory restore partition.

Is there a way I can add in the record so that If I press F11 my PC
will boot into the factory restore partition?

 

[Chuck]

Likely not. the HP partition contained the old version of windows, and may
have been trashed when you did the full install.
The factory backup restore, as I recall, was deliberately crippled anyway.
I'd be more inclined to put my trust in one of the better 3d party
backup/restore utilities.

 

[Immortal]

Hi Chuck,
Thanks for your response. what I did was an installation over the
existing installation of windows, I can see that the D drive factory
restore drive is accessible and files instide there which is obvisouly
not accessible when I m logged in.

I think what has has happen is there is not MBR to that drive. can I
manually add it to make it working?

 

[Gene E. Bloch]

Hi Everyone,
I had a HP PC running windows vista home basic, it crashed and was not
able to boot in vista. Startup repair or safe mode did not work, so
inorder to save data I installed vista business on top of it. The data
is recovered and now when I try to boot to the factory restore it does
not work, noticed in msconfig under boot.ini tab there is no boot
record to the factory restore partition.

Is there a way I can add in the record so that If I press F11 my PC
will boot into the factory restore partition?

Isn't the boot to the factory restore controlled by a keypress at POST
time?

POST = Power On Self Test, that is, the time when it's in the BIOS;
it's the time when you see the HP logo and the message to press F2 or
whatever. You need to press the proper key at that time to get into the
recovery system, perhaps F11 or Alt-F11 or something.

On my HP laptop, it's F11 (or you can instead press Esc to get into a
menu which gives, inter alia, the system recovery option).

 

[gls858]

Hi Chuck,
Thanks for your response. what I did was an installation over the
existing installation of windows, I can see that the D drive factory
restore drive is accessible and files instide there which is obvisouly
not accessible when I m logged in.

I think what has has happen is there is not MBR to that drive. can I
manually add it to make it working?

It MIGHT be a simple as taking ownership of the file on your d
partition. No guarantee though.

http://www.vistax64.com/tutorials/67717-take-ownership-file.html

gls858

 

[Merle]

When HP's splash screen comes up did you press F11 to access your D drive
for The recovery partition?

 

[Canuck57]

Likely not. the HP partition contained the old version of windows, and may
have been trashed when you did the full install.
The factory backup restore, as I recall, was deliberately crippled anyway.
I'd be more inclined to put my trust in one of the better 3d party
backup/restore utilities.

Hm, I didn't have any problems with my HP M9715F recovery. First thing
I do is make a set of recoveries, pull the old disk and test the restore
onto a new larger drive. Worked great.

 

[Al]

Immortal - The option to press F11 for recovery is a modification made to
the MBR (Master Boot Record) at the time the recovery partition was
created - installation of the Business version removed the modification.
However there is a viable option - HP provides an utility to copy the
reovery partition to removeable media (CD/DVD) and to remove the recovery
partition by extending the Primary/Active partition.

 

[Merle]

Immortal - If the poster had pressed F11 at the first sign of trouble he or
she would not have posted to this group.