Factory Recovery assistance

mdev · Apr 16, 2018

HI All, I have a HPE-175a Windows 7 Home Premium desktop and life and the desktop did not come together to make a recovery disc when things were working well naturally. My hard drive started to have issues after it locked up and started to load windows very slowly and attempts to resolve the issue by system repair etc did not work as expected so I backed up my files and did a system recovery and then made the disc.
This disc did not create correctly and barely gives me a Microsoft repair disc but this is not useful due to incomplete disc creation. I did manage to repair my drive via seatools and got it to restore again to defaults and attempted make a system image - not go an I/o error occurred so again incomplete. The hard drive I have I can see the recovery partition as it has not been damaged and I have purchased a new Seagate 1tb drive so with match brand and size as original but would like to know a way if possible to copy the factory partition onto disc and make this bootable so that I can put in my new hard drive and reset back to defaults and then use this as my recovery disc as I only able to get 1 set and that option has now been removed, any assistance tips etc would be greatly appreciated. It is out of warranty as purchased back in 2010.
Thanks Mark

jojesa · Apr 18, 2018

If you hard drive failed then the HP SYStem Recovery Image could be damaged.

You could clone the old HDD onto the the new one using Macrium Reflect Free Edition.
You will have to download and install Macrium app on another working PC.
After installation finishes, open the app and create a recovery disk (USB or CD/DVD).
Insert a USB flash drive or blank CD/DVD drive and from the backup pane on Macrium Reflect, click “other tasks,” then click “create rescue media.”
Since you have Windows 7, click the 'Change PE version' button' and select the version that supports Windows 7.
Click OK
You could leave the rest of default options as they are and click 'Next' until you have the option to select the CD/DVD or USB flash drive you will use as a recovery disk.
Click 'Finish'
Plug the recovery disk and power ON your PC and hit the Esc key repeatedly (once every second), until a startup or 'Select Boot Device Menu' opens.
Select the recovery disk to boot into Macrium Reflect .
Select the disk you need to clone from the main window of Macrium Reflect, and click 'Clone this disk' link.

There are other apps you could use to clone a disk like Clonezilla

mdev · Apr 18, 2018

HI Jojesa,

Thanks for the reply, just to clarify a few things, I am not able to boot into windows so my concern is if I make a recovery media disc with the software you advised of my failed hard drive, how will I be able to access the factory reset because when I try this now on the HP screen pressing f11 does not work though I can see the recovery parition on another pc. I get e drive system 66mb free of 99mb f drive inacessible and no capacity shown and g drive - recovery 1.5gb of 10.6gb I realised I did not state this in first instance so this is an error on my part so please accept my apologies. When I did manage to repair my drive through sea tools I did actually boot and got error message which allowed me to restore my pc to factory defaults I then update windows etc and then attempted to make a system image and that is when I got the i/o error and image was not made.and I shut down and when booting up the next day got os not found and not able to access f11 for system recovery...

jojesa · Apr 18, 2018

If you didn't over-write the HP recovery partition then it could be still there intact and could be clone to another HDD.
But if the recovery partition is corrupted then you will have issues even with a new HDD.
Why don't you perform a clean installation of Windows to avoid issues.?

mdev · Apr 21, 2018

HI Jojesa,

An update I was cleaning out junk and lo and behold I have the recovery discs, I had made way back and must have completely forgotten about them. So armed I put my new seagate 1tb (st1000dm010) in and started to use the discs - all went well until it restarted and I got a windows cannot complete install after I got to installing drivers 100% and starting services "cannot install computer hardware"and restarted got to starting services and got cannot install windows will continue installing after restart and this repeats. I have the original drive Seagate 1tb st31000528as and on review of the drive have 512mb sectors but the new drive has 4096 sectors both are 7200rpm but my new has better specs and my recovery discs are for windows 7 home premium and it is not service pack 1. Is there a solution to this problem as not sure I can risk a reformat of the original drive to use again. Also if I can clone the original hard drive and place onto a new one 1. how do I make it bootable so I can use and 2. will this solve my new hard drive issue? thanks heaps Mark

jojesa · Apr 21, 2018

That's a Windows bug and there are several ways about it

-When you see the error, eject any discs from the optical drive, remove any USB devices (flash drives, etc.) and reboot the computer. Make sure the new hard drive is selected as the boot drive, you could press F9 to select it from the Boot Menu or change boot order in the BIOS (F10 or F2 to enter BIOS).
The installation should continue.
or
-When you see the error, press Shift + F10 to open Command Prompt.
Type 'CD C:\windows\system32\oobe' and hit Enter
Type 'msoobe' and hit Enter
The Windows account creation wizard opens, create any account then reboot the PC.
The installation should continue.
or
-When you see the error press Shift + F10 to open Command Prompt.
Type 'net user administrator /active:yes' hit Enter
Type 'net user administrator mypass' hit Enter (admin login password is now 'mypass')
Close the error window (don't click the OK button)
The installation should continue.

mdev · Apr 23, 2018

HI Jojesa, do I do this on the first error I get after drivers are installed to 100% - as I originally pressed ok and went to the 2nd message and then I did shift f10 and went with option 2 it seems to create the account but it does not appear to configure to the hp factory settings namely all recovery partion files are showing and that never happened before nor can I get windows update to work.
When I did manage to get my drive to factory rest f11 it did go back to factory defaults so I did see what it would look like but this is not the same now so it doesn't seem to carry across. so was wondering if do this on the first error not the 2nd or my recovery disk only supports 512kb sectors and not the 4k sector my new hard drive has.

jojesa · Apr 23, 2018

You follow the steps as soon as the error appears. Do not click OK on the error window.
New disk support the more efficient sector size of 4096 bytes (4k) that should not be an issue with Windows 7. Microsoft reased 4K-sector-compatible software beginning with Windows Vista SP1.

mdev · Apr 30, 2018

HI Jojesa,

Problem is solved - the HP software will not install correctly onto AF drives as it only works with non AF drives. I had an buffalo external drive which has a non AF drive and it installs correctly and is if I had the original drive in it. The 2nd solution provided did work but it caused windows update issues etc so the HP software clearly does not like the AF drives.

Thanks for all your assistance it has been greatly appreciated ..

Regards Mark

jojesa · Apr 30, 2018

Glad everything worked out.
There is an update from Microsoft (hotfix KB982018) that fixes the AF issue.

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