disk recovery after new hard drive instal

[tournesol]

My hard drive failed so I bought a new one and plugged it in.
I have recovery disks so inserted the first one in the cd/dvd drive and turned the computer on.
Recovery Manager launches fine with the 2 options:
"I need help immediately" "Factory Reset" (highlighted) and "I'd like to take precautions" "File back up program" (in grey)

I have a wireless keyboard which works (I was able to access the bios menu) but I can not find a way of starting Factory reset. I tried enter, tab etc... nothing works.

Can you tell me which key need to be pressed to start the Factory reset?

Thank you.

[Paul_Tikkanen]

Hi:

In order to boot from a DVD, you need to change a couple of BIOS settings.

See the info below for what settings to change.

https://support.hp.com/us-en/document/c03659945/

Then normally, you restart the PC, tap the ESC key to get the menu of options.

Then select the F9 boot options menu, select the DVD drive from the list, and hit the enter key.

Then watch the screen for further instructions.

[tournesol]

Hi again,

I managed to be able to click on the reset factory option in the recovery manager but then I have a message that the new hard drive i installed is smaller than the original and therefore the operation can not be done.

Thing is the original hard drive was 3T and the new one is 4T so hardly smaller....

As i can't use the recovery disks i initially created, what are my chances of getting install disks from HP for free?

Thanks.

[Paul_Tikkanen]

Hi:

This is a peer to peer forum.

I don't work for or represent HP.

You would have to call HP support for the country you live in and see if they would send you a set of recovery disks.

http://www8.hp.com/us/en/contact-hp/ww-contact-us.html

But I think you would have the same problem anyway.

However, you can try this workaround and see if you can get W8 to install by making plain W8 installation media and then it shouldn't matter how big the HDD is.

https://docs.google.com/file/d/0B0W9PBigPy94aVJWSndyTFNFMzg/edit?pli=1

Then use this tool to put the file on a 4GB or higher USB flash drive.

https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/windows-usb-dvd-download-tool

You had posted you are running W8 32 bit on there, but the product specs page indicates it came with W8 64 bit, and that is what the above W8 ISO file is.

The file works for the embedded product keys in the USA/Canada.

I don't know if the file will work with the product key for PC's used in other countries.