i am trying to restore pavillion p6130f desktop [ Edited ]

[neojoneswd]

has vista home premium 64bit OS.

will not boot up, do not have recovery disks but ordered them

want to back up hard drive first.  having trouble getting to PF11 recovery screen as well

may be bad hard drive or vista os file or both.  trying to create boot disk(cd or flash)

without total recovery files?  i think i created a flash drive boot but have not tried it yet

because all the 'how to...' advice seems to say different ways of doing it...looking for cd/dvd

version of boot but doesnt seem to exist.

what is the true and best way to get access to computer so i can backup files?  can i boot the system

without total restore of vista?(just get to admin recovery access?)  i have backed up the system to an

external hard drive...can i restore from it??  how?  vista does not make it easy to get into dos without

being fully booted up in the os...

do not want to get new pc cause this unit is great hardware wise...may need hard drive replaced but have

lots of bookmarks and favorites, links and files i don't want to start over to get back??  how do i make sure

all this is saved before reinstall and/or replacement of drive???

all advice accepted

[Personal Information Removed]

neojones

[TheOldMan]

If the statement "i have backed up the system to an external hard drive" is exact, then the program that was used to "backup" should also restore.  If there is some question on the extent of the backup, then see this:

http://www.howtogeek.com/howto/windows-vista/use-ubuntu-live-cd-to-backup-files-from-your-dead-windo...

Making the Ubuntu CD on another computer will also give you a bootable Cd to browse the hard drive and hardware.  If there is any doubt about the hardware, try this: http://www.ultimatebootcd.com/

Another bootable CD and there are testing routines for finding any hardware problems, if there are any.

[neojoneswd]

its whether i can get to the recovery manager pgm to run the restore from the backup.  i would like to

just get thru the boot process to be able to access the programs to restore or backup.

the pf11 is not working and vista is a pain to work around the os to get into dos. i think i have created a

bootable flash drive but have not tried it yet.  was trying to create a bootable cd without a full system restore

disk...have not found that solution yet if there is one.

thanks for the links and your quick response...will give kudos.

bill