HP System Restore Pavilion 735n

Is there any way to force an HP Pavilion (Model 735N) to boot to the recovery partition. I have a customer that has a this HP and it will not boot into Windows XP. It is stuck in a loop. I could have sworn that HPs had a keyboard shortcut to do this. Maybe its not all Models. I ran diagnostics on the computer and tested the hard drive thoroughly as that was my first area of the computer to suspect to be faulty. Everything passed. Unfortunately this customer is just like every other customer that buys a PC they did not make CD backups of their Recovery Discs as instructed by the user manual. I am not sure the harddrive is toast and wanted to attempt a recovery.

I am gonna attempt to install windows temporarily on another hard drive to see if I can get access to the original. I may be forced to tell the customer she has to wait and be out an extra $20 or so while I wait for the recovery discs from HP. Unless any of you have a idea that may work.

Computer Specs
HP Pavilion 735N
Pentium 4 @ 2.53GHz
512MB PC2100 DDR Memory (1 Chip)
80 GB Western Digital IDE HardDrive
DVD-ROM
CD-RW
Integrated Intel Graphics

I was working on a A series the other week, and it only offered to make recovery CD's from the HD...didn't allow you to boot to it though. Which is lame...

As for a fix, you could always install WinXP Home (I assume) and use the CDKey from the unit. It'll probably be an OEM copy, so you would need a similar CD...a Retail might work, but I don't know for sure.

Then you might be able to access the rest of the recovery partition. I would hope HP included the install files to the programs, so you could use those to re-install anything the customer needed immediately.

Of course, it would still be best to just wait for the recovery disc.

Thats what I am going to attempt. I am going to install my version of XP temporarily on another harddrive so I can try to access the original HardDrive. That way I can run a virus scan and a spyware scan on the affected Hard Drive to see if I can at least get the machine to boot. Otherwise I am going to just order the recovery CDs and charge the customer the $20 for the discs (that is what HP charges) and little extra for me as an inconvienence fee. This all could have been avoided had she read her start up guide which states that they should make a backup of the recovery CDs ASAP.

Or a repair install...didn't think of that before. That would save all her registry info...

As yet another alternative if you have one already you might want to boot into BartPE and see what you can find that way. Easier than installing windows, unless you have to make the BartPE from scratch which is kinda time consuming.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by InTheWayBoy

Or a repair install...didn't think of that before. That would save all her registry info...

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I do not have access to Windows XP Home. All I have is professional. I do not think you can use a XP pro disc to do a repair install on XP Home.

No...need Home. Oh well!

you could try downloading and booting to some of the repair cd's that are avaliable on the net like
The Nyquil kids av cd
http://www.slashbomb.com/download/pa...ion=file&id=52

Will that work with NTFS Partitions?

yup

hp restore shortcut keys are any of the keys from f9-f12
start tappin as soon as u get power

F-10 :)

F10 indeed. If the recovery partition is corrupted, and you can't run a restore from it, HP will send you the CDs for $11 or so, and you get them in a day or two. Most current Pavilions only boot to the recovery CD if they find a free or empty partition in the system, so FDISK the drive to remove the NTFS partition first.

The recovery partition must be corrupt somehow because I press F10 and it tried to load a system recovery, but it flashes a virtual memory error and then reboots.

I put in another hard drive and installed Windows on it so I could attemp a scan for viruses and spyware. Well that worked and my client has 22 different viruses and loads of spyware.

I am going to try to locate the EXE that may load the program so I can create discs to restore, but that may prove to be unsuccessful

Well, I broke down and ordered the CDs. I tried everything to get the system recovery to work. My client is just going to have to wait and pay a little extra premium for her service. Thanks for all your replies. Its too bad she is not hot, I'd make a deal. Oh well, Money works too. :)