HP Laptop Non-destructive recovery?

[tholley]

I am working an HP Pavilion Entertainment PC laptop w/ Win7 pre-installed.
It is having some lock up issues, somewhat resolved after removing Mcafee Av, but still tends to freeze up at times. The user had several registry cleaners on it and I think between those two it still has some registry issues.

The Recovery partition does not show an option for a non-destructive repair install, like in XP. It has Software Program Reinstallation, Hardware Driver Reinstallation, System Restore, and System Recovery. The System Recovery makes it very clear that it will format the hard drive and all files created by the user will be lost.

Is there any other option to reinstall the OS without losing all his personal files?
I would back them up for him, but he has allot of movie files that would take up too much space.

Or.. would creating another partition for all his movie files to be stored on, and then doing a System Recovery on the main partion work?

thanks!

 

[Jacee]

Repair install is what you're after http://www.sevenforums.com/tutorials/3413-repair-install.html

 

[whs]

You can also create a Data Partition to where you move all the user data. Then you can reinstall.

That's what you get from registry cleaners. There are so many warnings about using them, but people never seem to listen.

 

[tholley]

Jacee... Not sure if that will work with the pre-installed Win7?
Here is what is what I am looking at...
Using HP Recovery Manager in Windows 7 HP Pavilion Notebook PCs - HP Customer Care (United States - English)

I do have an Win7 dvd from my computer tho, but that doesn't have all the pre-installed software that came with the HP.

 

[tholley]

That's what you get from registry cleaners. There are so many warnings about using them, but people never seem to listen.

I agree... I already uninstalled all of them off of his laptop.

 

[tholley]

You can also create a Data Partition to where you move all the user data. Then you can reinstall.

That's what I'll do!

Thanks for the help!

 

[gregrocker]

Make the recovery disk set so you have an alternative method.

Shrink the OS partition using Disk Management (which is only failsafe) then move data to data partition, including User folders if you want: http://www.sevenforums.com/tutorials/18629-user-folders-change-default-location.html

Now use the installer for his version, run a http://www.sevenforums.com/tutorials/3413-repair-install.html?ltr=R from the desktop,.

If this doesn't overcome the corruption, wipe the OS partition and clean reinstall the OS with Product Key on COA sticker. The installer is driver-complete, with newer arriving quickly via Windows Update. Any drivers then missing in Device Manager can be found on Support Downloads webpage.

You can also extract HP apps from the Recovery Disks using this: http://www.sevenforums.com/installa...are-after-clean-win-7-install.html#post488270