Activation issue after clean install on new hard drive

Have you left the recovery partition on the old hard drive "untouched"? All you did was copy its contents to a folder on C:?

F5ing said:

Have you left the recovery partition on the old hard drive "untouched"? All you did was copy its contents to a folder on C:?

It's still on there, yes. I just copied the files and made a folder in C:

SIW2 said:

You are probabaly better finding out what those are.

I would change the extension on them to .wim .

Then see if 7-zip can open them.

( No point in bothering with samsung recovery utility - it will look for a particular existing partition structure, which you don't have )

Changed them to .wims but 7-zip didn't like it.

@F5ing,

There was already a suggestion about adding a boot menu entry to see if he could boot up recov partition.

That is always the first thing to try.

@mrbongo,

Looks like they have changed the headers.

Out of interest, what is in all the other folders?

This is like getting blood out of a stone.

Just run dir command on the folder containing copied recov partition and post it up.

If you can afford to "start over" by blowing away the install you've done to the new drive (including any data you've added to it), I think the easiest way out of this is cloning your old drive to the new in an attempt to perform the recovery using the new drive (which I think should give you an activated/validated install of w7).

If successful you can then use something like ABR or Advanced Tokens Manager to back up activation keys, then try a clean install and see if you can reactivate the install using either of those apps.

Even if you don't want to do a clean install, if the recovery is successful and you end up with an activated install, you're in good shape. You can just make images from that point forward in case you ever run into something like this again.

I just read back through the thread and didn't see if you'd tried triggering Recovery by tapping the F4 key at boot.

If this would still work you might be able to reimage the old HD onto the new one and trigger Recovery to run from the image.

First try it the way it is now to see if you get lucky and can direct Recovery to the new HD. It does offer some options according to this: Recovering!! - Cyprus Forum.

Then unplug the new HD and set the old one to boot first, plugged in as it was from factory, try F4 again at boot tapping vigorously. Check also if any other key is given on first boot screen for Recovery as some Samsung's vary. I realize it's a dying HD but it may be instructive as to what to expect from cloning/re-imaging.

I realize it's a long shot but we should at least know what functonality that key has now, as SIW2 may be able to rejigger it to trigger Recovery as he's done before.

The F4 attempt is definitely worth a shot. I've forgotten what errors were popping up for that original drive (in the other thread) but it's worth a try. Just got to hope the machine can locate it in order to launch it.

F4 takes me to Boot Manager

What listings are in Boot Manager?

What key does the BIOS splash screen show to use for Recovery?

gregrocker said:

What listings are in Boot Manager?

What key does the BIOS splash screen show to use for Recovery?

Boot manager shows Windows 7.

From here F8 takes me to advanced boot options.

At BIOS, Recovery is F4.