Reinstalling Windows 7

Glad to help. Let us know how it goes.

JRMC said:

I'd like to format my computer for many reasons but I have a question but before that I'd like to say that I got this computer through an event, here in my country, that costed me 150€ but it didn't come with the Windows 7 Home Premium installation/backup CD and I really want to format it. So, please let me know if I download a Windows 7 Home Premium copy and use the product key, below my computer, will it work?

Pressing the f11 key during startup on a computer with an HP factory image will start the system recovery process even if the prompt is not displayed.
How to make HP Recovery DVD disks:
Recover Windows Vista Operating System Using HP Recovery - HP Customer Care (United States - English)

How to make HP Recovery USB disk:
Creating a Recovery Disk on a USB Flash Disk HP Pavilion dv6700z CTO Entertainment Notebook PC - HP Customer Care (United States - English)

or
You can Order HP Recovery Disks from here:
Compaq Mini CQ10-500 PC series*-* HP Notebook PCs - Order Recovery Discs for Windows 7, Vista, or XP - c00810334 - HP Business Support Center

I followed the steps to replace my HDD with an SSD recommend by Gregrocker - created an image backup and then did the system image recovery. System drive in my laptop is 1tb, backed up the image to an eSATA drive with 360gb. Replaced the old drive with a 120gb SSD and began the System Image Recovery process. Went through the screens, keyboard, etc., found the image backup on the eSATA drive, mapped as E, clicked on it and then NEXT. Then the error - "The system image restore failed. No disk that can be used for recovering the system disk can be found." I found that peculiar inasmuch as the process correctly located and highlighted the file on E: Then did some searching on the error and found only that I should try to re size to original partition, currently almost the entire 1tb HD. So I did that, down to about 60gs, surely small enough for a 120 gb SSD. But the error persists. 4 hours later and still making new images, and getting the same error. I think that maybe the partition size is not the problem but I have no idea what to do next. System is an HP Pavilion. And OS is Win 7 Professional with virtual XP.

Very grateful for any suggestions. I have my recovery disks but would rather not begin at square 1.

Thanks a lot.

LowPingBoy

My apologies for not responding sooner. Got caught up in Father's day for the remainder of Sunday, had a long and lousy day at work yesterday and did not get back to it until last night.

Turned out to be far more involved than I believed it should be after following the steps earlier presented in this thread. Tried the Geek approach for awhile but continued to become frustrated with various nags too numerous to describe. So, purchased the Paragon download and was then confronted by a host of other issues the most formidable of which had to do with dynamic vs. basic disk. I have no idea how anything was made dynamic, which prevents the clone operation, but it is not an easy process to reverse back to basic.

The long and the short of it is that I finally have a 120g OCZ Agility 3 up and blazing. And, as you know, blaze is probably not sufficient to describe the speed improvement. Opened a Word attachment in an email in about 1 second and Word was not then open.

Thanks to all who have helped me through this. I have to believe that I am really an outlier here, because it sure did not go described by many others. The next challenge for me is trying to get a clear idea of how the drives share and map between Win 7 and XP. But that's for another day after studying tutorials that I hope can take me through it. This laptop is a desk top replacement that is running pure XP. But for some reason drives on the Win 7/XP just seem a whole lot more involved. Would be very cool if you could open Computer in Win 7 and My Computer in XP and see the same thing. Guess there must be a reason why MS did not set it up that way, but it sure would have been a whole lot easier for those of us that have to frequently switch back and forth between the two.

Thanks to all for your help.

LPB

LowPingBoy said:

My apologies for not responding sooner. Got caught up in Father's day for the remainder of Sunday, had a long and lousy day at work yesterday and did not get back to it until last night.

Turned out to be far more involved than I believed it should be after following the steps earlier presented in this thread. Tried the Geek approach for awhile but continued to become frustrated with various nags too numerous to describe. So, purchased the Paragon download and was then confronted by a host of other issues the most formidable of which had to do with dynamic vs. basic disk. I have no idea how anything was made dynamic, which prevents the clone operation, but it is not an easy process to reverse back to basic.

The long and the short of it is that I finally have a 120g OCZ Agility 3 up and blazing. And, as you know, blaze is probably not sufficient to describe the speed improvement. Opened a Word attachment in an email in about 1 second and Word was not then open.

Thanks to all who have helped me through this. I have to believe that I am really an outlier here, because it sure did not go described by many others. The next challenge for me is trying to get a clear idea of how the drives share and map between Win 7 and XP. But that's for another day after studying tutorials that I hope can take me through it. This laptop is a desk top replacement that is running pure XP. But for some reason drives on the Win 7/XP just seem a whole lot more involved. Would be very cool if you could open Computer in Win 7 and My Computer in XP and see the same thing. Guess there must be a reason why MS did not set it up that way, but it sure would have been a whole lot easier for those of us that have to frequently switch back and forth between the two.

Thanks to all for your help.

LPB

Well done.

You are welcome.

<<<<<<then Drive Options (Advanced) to Delete all partitions not needed, following illustrated steps given here: Clean Install Windows 7>>>>

I've read the link but don't get the larger picture.

My current drive has two partitions. One hidden with the Lenovo OEM Vista install and the balance for general use that I see as c:\.

Is the object to delete both partitions during the advanced install and then the installer somehow creates its own hidden partition for the OS and the balance for general use or does Brink's 'How to Partition' infer that I need to make all the decisions regarding creating n partitions of n size--which is not something that I look forward to.

Mark

That's a relief!

One more--I've now got so many directions my directions have directions ;-).

And I cannot find one that's sticking in my mind regarding booting the installer from an SS thumb drive. I'm fairly certain that the direction said to change the BIOS setting to an 'extended something' specific to a thumb drive. Does that statement ring any bell with you?

Mark