HP m7-1015dx Factory Reset Fail

I'm on my first and new laptop, still on week one. Permissions were being stolen by the OS and making programs irrelevant. This seems to be a breaking problem in the General Forum this week with many users coming in with symptoms of that.

So I made a recovery USB stick, downloaded an .iso from Digital River, and am currently trying to do a factory restore.

My first try I pressed F11 to get the choices and I didn't unplug my mouse against directions and my screen stayed black but on during the supposed reset, I got impatient and rebooted with the Power button and it said something about couldn't find BOOTMNG.exe. So I hit F9 on startup and got to another chance to reset to factory, but used my USB stick, which worked AFAIK, but since, my screen is still black but on instead of seeing any sign of activity for the past 25 minutes.

I'm about to take it back to the Geek Squad if the .iso DVD option doesn't work either.

I'm trying the DVD option from Digital River. Had to reformat the drive and lose all the HP stuff. First partition is 32,000 MB (so I can create my own recovery partition that works more than once?) *this also automagically created a 100 MB System partition to keep track of partitions; 2nd partition is 799,000 MB (which is where I'm installing Windows 7); 3rd partition is about 120 GB (for where I'll install that tablety Windows 8).

If I lose my Beats By Dre speaker program, I'll be upset!

Why download the ISO to write to stick if you plan to run HP System Recovery? Just be sure to make your Recovery disks first.

With the installer you can get the superior Clean Reinstall - Factory OEM Windows 7.
Be sure to follow the steps closely and read the Special Note for Owners of HP so you understand the choices about keeping the factory Recovery and Diagnostics Tools partition.

The recovery partition and the recovery USB stick were NOT working. Went to .iso DVD. That at least loads something but looks to be bare bones Windows 7. The 25 digit code on the bottom of my laptop doesn't seem to be valid with this .iso, which is disconcerting, but I can skip that step and skip Activation for up to 30 days. I skipped getting updates from M$ for now. I got booted into Win 7 Home Premium.

I could not get connected to a wireless network, so I got a 14 foot cord to my router and still could not get connected to the network. I got my Road Runner CD out but the readme on that says December 2000, so it's got to be ridiculously out of date. It thinks I have Windows 2000 & 4 GB of RAM (I have 8 GB).

Network Setup from Control Panel says I don't have a NIC card, so I can't set up a network. This is a laptop. I can only assume I need drivers from somewhere. I can use my XP desktop computer to get drivers from the HP website onto a USB stick, if such a site exists. I'm gonna need a lot of HP goodies from somewhere.

Also, while partitioning, I forgot to set the last partition properly so I'm reinstalling Windows 7 again so I can set the 120 GB partition.

Uhg, I installed Win 7 on both large partitions. Should I leave it like that for the $14.99 upgrade Win 8 disk?

How to buy or upgrade to Windows 8, or avoid it entirely http://www.washingtonpost.com/busine...bc7_story.html

So should I use the USB stick with the System Recovery on it now that a boot manager definitely exists?
Performing an HP System Recovery (Windows 7) | HP® Support

I'm reinstalling Windows 7 another time. Hedging my bets on partition sizes for a 1 TB drive (953,767 MB = 931.4 GB, not including System Reserve).
Disk 0 Partition 1: 100 MB (71 MB Free space) for System Reserve (automatically appeared)
Disk 0 Partition 2: 462,500 MB = 451.7 GB (Installing first instance of Win 7 on this)
Disk 0 Partition 3: 462,500 MB = 451.7 GB (Installing 2nd instance of Win 7 on this for Win 8 Upgrade)
Disk 0 Partition 4: 28,767 MB = 28.1 GB (Copying USB HP recovery stick contents here, but it only fills up about 1.2 GB instead of 16.9 GB. I was given a notice that 24,920 MB was the minimum recommended for installation when I inputted 23,767 MB in the partition size field earlier.)

Installations of Win 7 from the .iso DVD were around 21.1 GB. Must be a lot of files expanding like popcorn in there.

All of the issues you ran into are addressed in the tutorial I linked for you, including special Notes for HP Owners to consider. If you'd taken the time to read it then you would have known you need your wireless driver on a stick or CD to get online, and then to install all of your Important and Optional UPdates to get any missing drivers and other important Updates.

Only then if any drivers are missing in Device Manager do you need to go to the HP SUpport Downloads webpage to import them.

We don't do sloppy work here but set the standards for perfect Win7 installs. So if you're too sloppy or lazy to read tutorials please don't waste our time as there are countless thousands of others who want the best install they can get.

Getting the DVD .iso on the machine allowed the machine to boot up. Then I put the recovery flash drive in the slot and shut down the machine. I rebooted to the flash drive by hitting ESC, then F9, then choosing the flash drive. I followed the directions from
Performing an HP System Recovery (Windows 7) | HP® Support
and I guess everything is factory restored. The 3 partitions I made previously were erased and I have 1 large c: drive instead of alternating C: drives depending on which drive I boot into; I got my System Recovery partition back. I got all my precious crapware from HP back. Mission complete? I've gotta check my drive security permissions yet, then update my Norton before going to Windows Update.

Edit: the recovery partition I thought I had was just the flash drive still plugged in.

So you want the worst load of crapware and duplicate utilities to be found anywhere?

Did you notice an option for an HP Minimal Recovery or do you crave the corruption?

At least Clean Up Factory Bloatware