How Do I Use My System Recovery Disks?

[SonicBrewtality]

A few years ago i created system recovery disks and had to use them to restore my laptop. I didn't know what to do so my friend did it for me, but now he's not around and i need to reformat because i'm giving the laptop to my girlfriend.

I still have the disks but have no idea how to use them. I've gone in the HP recovery manager and clicked yes when it asks if i want to restore to the factory settings. It then restarts and seems to be looking for a windows 7 installation disk which i don't have and as far as i recall never have done.

On boot up i tried pressing f11 and it said it was going to the system recovery, and then it just loaded up windows anyway.

How do i restore my computer?

 

[marsmimar]

In order to use your recovery disks, you have to make sure that your computer will boot from the CD/DVD drive as the first boot option and not from the hard drive. According to HP, the factory default boot order for the Pavilion dv3 series is floppy drive, optical drive (CD/DVD), hard drive, USB device. Since you probably don't have a floppy drive connected, the computer should boot from the CD/DVD drive.

Put Recovery Disk # 1 into the CD/DVD tray and close the tray. Now restart the computer. You will probably see a brief prompt on the screen to press any key to boot from the CD/DVD drive. You must press a key (the space bar is a good choice) and the computer should boot from Recovery Disk # 1. If you miss the prompt the computer will then move to the next device and boot from it. (That would be your hard drive.)

But if the default boot order was changed, you'll have to go into the BIOS to make the CD/DVD drive first boot option.

This HP article gives some more info including how to access the hidden recovery partition and how to use the Function keys to access the BIOS.

Configuring the Boot Order in the System BIOS HP Pavilion dv3 Series Notebook PC | HP Support

 

[theog]

How to use HP Recovery:
http://h10025.www1.hp.com/ewfrf/wc/document?docname=c01895783&cc=us&dlc=en&lc=en
Performing an HP System Recovery (Windows 7) | HP® Support

 

[SonicBrewtality]

thanks, i had to press F9 on startup and then boot from CD

 

[marsmimar]

Glad to hear you got it sorted out! Thanks for posting back.

 

[gregrocker]

That will reinstall all of the HP bloatware and useless duplicate utilties which throttle Win7 from its native performance. For this reason most tech enthusiasts choose to Clean Reinstall - Factory OEM Windows 7 to dump the HP bloatware and get a perfect install without the crap.