Need to recover my windows 7 using manufacturer's recovery partition

[Ben Acharyaa]

Hey guys, I've tried searching a lot about this topic but couldn't find an answer or maybe it was too complicated for me. So basically i 'm trying to restore my windows 7 home premium to factory settings. I don't have a backup CD and I can't find my product key which is supposed to be in an sticker at the back of my laptop. Well there is a sticker but its been two years and the sticker has been washed out(sort of) and I can't properly see the product key now.

My HP G62 notebook PC has 3 partitions. Drive C is where all of my data is stored, Drive D is named recovery, which I guess is a manufacturer's recovery partition. It occupies about 11 GB of memory. The third partition has nothing. I was thinking I could restore my laptop to factory settings using this manufacturer's recovery partition but a Microsoft support guy told me I'll need the product key and a windows 7 disc for this to work.

So what do I do now? How do I get my product key? I tried contacting HP to see if they could help me with the product key thing but since I don't live in the US, they keep transferring the line from one department to another. I'm so disappointed with their so called support.

So could you guys please tell me what shall I do now?

 

[ignatzatsonic]

Offhand, I think the MS support guy is wrong.

I've never had a PC with a recovery partition, but my understanding is that they will restore without any Windows 7 disc or Product Key.

Somebody will correct me if I'm wrong.

You'd need the Product Key from the sticker if you were going to do a clean install, but you aren't.

I think the recovery partition will self-activate.

I don't think recovery partitions are foolproof, so you may have issues of some kind. But generally they work OK.

You must back up any personal data or it will be lost.

 

[bigmck]

What Ignat said above is correct. You do not need a Windows CD or Product Key. The Recovery Partition will activate.

 

[theog]

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 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
How to make HP Recovery DVD disks:
Performing an HP System Recovery (Windows Vista) | HP® Support

How to make HP Recovery USB disk:
Using the Downloadable USB Recovery Flash Disk Creation Utility HP Pavilion dv6700z CTO Entertainment Notebook PC | HP® Support

or
You can Order HP Recovery Disks from here:
Country-language selector | HP® Support

You could try downloan loading the HP USB app:
HP USB Recovery Flash Disk Utility - HP Mini 110-1131DX PC | HP® Support

http://h10032.www1.hp.com/ctg/Manual/c01035677.pdf
Check the HP video:
Performing an HP System Recovery (Windows 7) | HP® Support

 

[gregrocker]

On some HP notebooks there is a Minimal Recovery choice when you run HP System Recovery
that gives as close to a Clean Reinstall as one can get without doing one. You can uninstall the one or two HP utilties it does reinstall to default to Win7's better versions.

Let us know if Recovery will not boot and run because there are ways we can make it run for you by setting up a special boot manager to Boot Recovery Partition using EasyBCD and also mounting the install.wim contained in it's partition to recover manually.

 

[Ztruker]

Greg, will that work with Windows 8 systems as well or do you have another tutorial on doing the EasyBCD thing for Win 8?

I've run into this a few times lately where setting the Recovery partition Active didn't work and never thought about using EasyBCD. These were Windows 7 systems, but I'm wondering about Windows 8.

 

[gregrocker]

Try it and let us know.

My Win8 specialty is uninstallation.

There's no Active with UEFI. But Easy does support it.

 

[Ben Acharyaa]

Thanks a lot people. I'll run the system recovery once i reach home, can anyone tell me how long it takes to complete the process?

 

[ignatzatsonic]

Thanks a lot people. I'll run the system recovery once i reach home, can anyone tell me how long it takes to complete the process?

That would depend on the details of your laptop and how much space was originally occupied on those partitions when you got the laptop. You've got an i3, which isn't a weakling.

Just a guess---I'd be surprised if it took hours. Maybe less than an hour.

Restoring a system image on my i5 takes less than a half hour, start to finish.

 

[Techmans]

When you using recovery partition for recovery you do not need key.
Backup your data and start the recovery.

 

[theog]

Greg, will that work with Windows 8 systems as well or do you have another tutorial on doing the EasyBCD thing for Win 8?

I've run into this a few times lately where setting the Recovery partition Active didn't work and never thought about using EasyBCD. These were Windows 7 systems, but I'm wondering about Windows 8.

Try it and let us know.

My Win8 specialty is uninstallation.

There's no Active with UEFI. But Easy does support it.

Windows 8 OEM Recovery Partitions will not reinstall, if updated to Windows 8.1.
Write up:
Windows 8.1 Update Leaves OEM Owners With Broken Restore Function | TechnologyTell
I would make a SIW2 Recovery USB drive from this thread.
Solved Unable to use built-in ASUS recovery partition - Page 6