Restore vista using hp recovery partition

[mrjonson]

Hi All

I have a hp laptop dv6615em, I don't have have recovery disks with me. Couple of months back I upgraded vista to window 7. Can I recover my laptop to factory setting window vista. When i press f11 or f10 key at booting time no recovery option comes. There is no hp recovery sign in laptop anywhere apart from HP RECOVERY PARTITION.
Can I restore my hp laptop to factory setting using HP RECOVERY PARTITION.

Pls note:- my internal dvd drive is not working and recently I have bought new external drive.

I appreciate you help in advance.

 

[gregrocker]

Your Recovery partition was likely disabled when Win7 was installed. But it might still be able to be run.

You'll need to make a System Repair Disk by typing Repair in Start Search box. If your optical drive will not boot CD's, then set your external CD drive to boot in BIOS setup, or write Repair CD ISO to flash stick: http://www.sevenforums.com/tutorials/2432-usb-windows-7-installation-key-drive-create.html or another method: http://dottech.org/featured/9157

Also, try marking the Recovery partition Active in Disk Mgmt to see if it will run using the prompts given to run Recovery on first bootup screen or your Manual, or if it will autostart (since pressing those keys normally marks it active).

If marking Recov partition active will not run it, then you will need to boot the Repair CD or flash stick , click through to Recovery Tools list, open a Command Line to type:

DISKPART
LIST DISK
SELECT DISK # (replace # with Win7 HD)
LIST PARTITION
SELECT PARTITION # (for Win7 partition)
ACTIVE
EXIT

Now, boot back into Win7 Repair console>Recovery Tools list to run Startup Repair up to 3 separate times.

Next, please unhide System and Hidden files in Control Panel>Folder Options>View tab, then post back a screenshot of the full contents of the partition. We are looking for a bootable image file to mount and run. Use Snipping Tool in Start Menu, attach file with paper clip in Reply Box.