Samsung NP300E5A not restoring to factory reset!

bloodyprince · 30 Jul 2014

What I did is went to diskpart and assigned a letter to recovery partition. Then I installed Samsung Recovery Solution 5 and removed the letter. But F4 still wouldn't work, and Samsung Recovery Solution when ran in windows, displays the message "Recovery area of the computer not found"! I apologize, I posted this message after I did everything, but before I tried if it works! I eventually did the factory restore by making recovery partition active and booting from it, but F4 still doesn't work, and Recovery Solution still doesn't see the recovery partition!

I have a windows 7 installation DVD, and I want to do a clean reinstall, but I would like to keep my recovery partition and to have F4 working, because Samsung Recovery Solution offer such an option as just installing drivers and utilities from recovery partition without doing the factory restore!

Can you see the reason why Recovery Solution doesn't see my recovery partition, and F4 doesn't work, from the screenshot of Disk mgmt. utility I sent earlier? Please help me!

gregrocker · 30 Jul 2014

I understand that while you want to do a Clean Reinstall, you want to relink your Samsung Recovery partition to its hotkey in order to boot it to reinstall certain softwares stored there. Are these softwares not listed on the Samsung Support Downloads webpage for your model PC as with most brands where users do a Clean Reinstall - Factory OEM Windows 7, and which may have newer versions like drivers posted?

There have been cases in the past here where Samsung Recovery partition held the only viable copy of needed OEM software that the user needed and wanted reinstalled, even though most of this OEM software is duplicative of better features in Win7.

If this is the position you find yourself in, then you can preserve Recovery during reinstsll to C, then try to run Recovery off a Dual Boot menu you set up temporarily for this purpose to Boot Recovery Partition using EasyBCD. I would try this first.

If this somehow doesn't work for your purposes and you need to restore the F4 key, then the person here who can show you how to do that is SIW2. Ask him to look at this thread so he can help you here so that others may benefit, if you choose to do this.

SIW2 · 01 Aug 2014

Вы сделали хорошо до сих пор

Some of those machines don't have anything on the recov partition, the image is created the first time the machine is started - something along those lines.

Seems your recov partition does have stuff on it. Looks like be some kind of mbr hook in for the F key

You might be able to do what is outlined here: Note the bit where it says "mbr fix"

Samsung NP300E5A not restoring to factory reset!-mbrfix.jpg

http://comps-tech-solution.blogspot....partition.html

I wouldn't. The so called "recovery solutions" from samung and sony are bloody awful. They manage to be complicated and limited at the same time. IMO they are downright hostile to the end user. I have heard the Lenovo one is sensible, but that is an exception.

Average users can be saved by using this very nice simple solution provided free by the lovely folk at AOMEI. This is how it should be done:

http://www.backup-utility.com/onekey-recovery.html

Samsung NP300E5A not restoring to factory reset!-aok-v1-menu.jpg

bloodyprince · 02 Aug 2014

I did an MBR fix, and now F4 works! This is what I did:

1. I went to diskpart utility via command prompt and made recovery partition active (as described here: https://www.sevenforums.com/tutorials/71432-partition-mark-active.html).
2. I booted from it to Samsung Recovery Solution on the recovery partition and pressed ctrl+alt+F10 to start management mode. The password is either secclx or secos.
3. Then I went to Tools tab, and clicked Admin Tool USB to create 'Samsung Recovery Solution Admin Tool' a bootable USB stick (you need a USB stick, it won't burn a CD).
4. I went back to Main tab, and launched diskpart via command prompt to make my system partition active again.
5. Booted from the USB stick (making USB-HDD primary boot device) to Samsung Recovery Solution Admin Tool.
6. Hit MBR Fix.
screenshots are here: Create Samsung Recovery Partition | Technical Solution

I would like to burn a Samsung Recovery Solution Admin Tool CD! Can you recommend a freeware that will make an .iso image of USB stick, so I can burn it to CD?