Booting from Repair Disc does not recognize keyboard or mouse

[gerryminder]

Back story: my hpe341 desktop (originally with Windows 7, upgraded to Win 10) suffered a HDD crash.   I had two weeks before created a WindowsImage on a USB attached drive.   I restored the Win 7, went through the upgrade process to get it back to Win 10.

The issue: Every attempt (booting to Win 10 and using the Control Panel > Restore or booting from the Windows 10 Repair Disc that I had built results in my being taken to a screen asking “Choose Your Keyboard Layout” (this on a light blue screen) but keyboard and mouse seem to be not functional.  All I can do is force a power down. I have tried all startups using both USB 2 and USB 3 ports and nothing works. Importantly, the machine worked perfectly under Win 7 and works perfectly now Win 10 in a normal boot process; the issue only arises when I try to reimage with the saved file.

The plea: It is frustrating to have the image file saved from two weeks before the crash and now not be able to load it: I suspect there is expertise out there in the Forum that will be able to help me.

Thanks in advance (I did searches and wasn’t able to find a post that resolved my query, if I missed one my apologies in advance)

[WAWood]

@gerryminder

Hello;

Allow me to welcome you to the HP forums!

HOW was this Windows Image made -- using the Win10 Recovery Drive process, or using HP Recovery Manager?

The problem with either of these is that you upgraded your PC to Win10; it did not come with that preinstalled.  And, during that Upgrade, MS creates and populates a recovery partition -- which complicates matters because HP had already created a Recovery partition on your drive.  So, it's likely the MS function got confused and did not properly create the Recovery media, given the mix of partitions from the Upgrade.

The Win10 community forum is repleat with posts like this (where folks relied on a Recovery solution from MS and it failed them), and the folks there are usually told to use a RELIABLE imaging tool, most often, Macrium Reflect -- although there are others out there, as well.

If the MS tool isn't work, sorry, there is really nothing we can do here to fix that.

Since you most likely want a RELIABLE recovery solution going forward (in order to restore your working Win10 instance), I recommend the following ...

I prefer to use third-party recovery solutions for the following reasons:
1) More flexibility and reliabilty -- can make recovery media as often as you like, not restricted to one attempt, which if it fails, then you are stuck.
2) More media options -- can create media in DVD, USB stick, or external drive format
3) Mounting option -- can "mount" the save images as virtual "drives" and extract individual files and folders
4) WinPE boot option -- can install a special boot option that allows you to boot to recovery information and do a repair or restore from there -- when Windows will not boot

What I recommend is the following:
1) Download and install Macrium Reflect (MR) from here: http://www.macrium.com/reflectfree.aspx
2) Run MR and choose the option: "Create an image of the partition(s) required to backup and restore Windows" to write a full backup to an external drive, USB stick, or DVDs
3) Use the option to create a boot USB stick or CD

My experience is that MR, when using the High Compression option, typically can compress the saved image file to about 50% of the USED space in the OS partition. This means if you have an 80GB OS partition, and 40GB is used, MR only needs about 20GB to store the image file.

I use this all the time and it typically takes less than 15 minutes to do the image backup and about the same time or less to do a restore. Plus, MR has the option to Add a Recovery Boot Menu entry. This allows you then to boot into WinPE, and you can then use that to do a restore -- when you can't boot into Windows!

NOW, you have the means to restore a full working system from the external drive, USB or DVDs stick in only a few minutes.

Good Luck

[gerryminder · Accepted solution]

I did use the Win 10 Recovery Process (clearly foolish on my part, counting on MS to deliver . . . ).  Indeed the HP_RECOVERY (D:) is here so you have appently cut right through to my problem.   I should note that the upgrade to Win 10 was ujninvited, I left the machine perking back in June and came back to find Win 10 taking over.  Foolish Mistake #2 on My Part  was not recognizing I could roll back to the stock Win 7.

Thanks very much for the cogent analysis and refernce to Macrium Reflect whcih I will followup on.  If I can give you two thumbs-up I most certainly will  The Windows.Image file will be kept as a shrine to Foolishness on My Part - but sadly is another push to migrate to the Mac side.