Can't boot into recovery partition

Sorry if I psted this in the wrong place, I'm a newbie here. Anyways, my parents asked me to reinstall windows 7 on their laptop. I've tried several times to boot into the recovery partition by pressing f11 at boot up, but it just continues to load windows. I've tried pressing esc, then f11, but that doesn't work, either. Finally, I've tried pressing f8 before windows starts and selecting repair your computer, but it gives me an error message saying a required device that's needed isn't there! How can I fix this?

Additional details:
I've partitioned it a little, and now every partition for some reason is a simple volume instead of primary partition.

Not surprised you can't use fkey to access recovery app.

You seem to have created a dynamic drive.

First thing to do is convert it back to a Basic drive.

You will need Partition Wizard 4 boot disc to do that.

When you have done that - you need to make the recovery partition Primary.

You might then be able to start the recovery program by marking the recov partition Active and restarting the lappie.

What make and model is their laptop?

Model looks to be a HP/Compaq,
As partition 5 is named HP_Tools.

Looks like an HP who typically configure with all 4 allowable primary partitions. Someone has added a 5th partition G: and accepted the dynamic disk change requirement.
If you want to stay with primary partitions you need to get rid of one partition as well as do the dynamic to basic disk conversion.

The simplest solution is to
1) backup G:
2) Delete G: making it unallocated
3) Resize C: back into the G: space
4) Use Partition Wizard 4.2 to convert disk back to basic
5) Ensure all partitions are set to primary.

Hopefully then your recovery partition will function as intended.

Then use an external USB HDD for File Backup. It's not good to have backup on a partition of the same drive anyway. If the drive dies so does your backup.

hello.


I know this is an old post and would love to know if this resolution would work for my situation. I think we have made the same mistake. The last operating system I know inside and out no longer is supported anymore (Windows XP).