Factory Reset Failed

[x360User1]

I did a hard reset/recovery of the laptop using the HP Recovery Manager, but about 50% through the process, it failed to finish.  It gave me the option to cancel the reset and return to windows, but now it gives an error message that a device is missing and it won't boot up.  It just keeps looping throught the boot process showing the HP logo and then restarting.

If I hit esc and F11 I can find the following error:

Error code: 0xc0000225:  A required device isn't connected or can't be accessed.

Is there a way to reset the laptop back to the original factory default?

[kyle_b]

There have been many of these type of boot problems posted for the Stream laptops, below are some possible solutions. 

If you cannot restore from the recovery partition by pressing F11 while powering up, you can restore from a recovery USB by booting it.  If you did not create the recovery USB, it can be ordered from HP. 

If you have Windows 10 installed, you can also download the install image from Microsoft and do a fresh install.  The drivers would need to be reinstalled from the hp.com site and all your personal files would be lost of course. 

If you want to attempt to fix the existing Master Boot Record, you can boot from a Windows 8.1 or Windows 10 install USB and run Troubleshoot => Advanced Options and run the BootRec.exe utility from the command prompt like below: 

bootrec /fixMBR
bootrec /Fixboot
bootrec /rebuildBCD

I have not done this myself so the commands above may not be complete.  There are many pages describing this, here are two: repair-master-boot-record-mbr-windows and windows_8-update/windows-8-is-stuck-in-an-automatic-repair-loop

Please let us know whatever procedure works for you.

[x360User1]

I had a Windows 10 install image so I ended up going that route.  The bootrec fixes were interesting so thanks for that info.

The fresh install wasn't as easy as I thought so here are the steps that worked for me.

In the BIOS, I had to change to Legacy mode since it refused to boot from any of the USB ports (I tried them all).

I had to choose custom install since I could not install over top the existing copy of Windows 10

I also had to delete every single partition first since I had an error message that wouldn't let me install into the existing partition.

Once all partitions were deleted, the install moved forward just fine.  The only issue was the product key.  The HP Stream originally had Windows 8.1 and I had no idea what the original key was.  I skipped the product key and was able to reactive after installing everything.

Also, all the drivers needed to be reinstalled.  I found missing drivers in the Device Manager and just right clicked and installed each one manually.

On the plus side, because I deleted all the paritions, I now have a LOT more room on the small 32GB internal drive and the computer is running much faster than before.