How to do reformat/use system recovery on old HP laptop without recovery disc? [ Edited ]

[jbautista83]

Hello: I do not have a recovery disc for my HP pavilion n5415 laptop and am trying to figure out how to reinstall the operating system to its original state. The relevant web page on this topic says to go to one of the following three options via the start panel:

      HP Tools , and then HP PC System Recovery .
      Hewlett-Packard , hp pavilion pc tools , and hp pc system recovery .
      PC Help & Tools , and then HP PC System Recov

But none of these are actually on the computer. It may be because this is a relatively old laptop, but I didn't think the recovery/reinstallation process would be all that different. What should I do from here?

[HaggisCat]

The usual way to boot into the recovery partition is to immediately start tapping the f11 key on boot up. Depending on how old the laptop is, this may not work, but I think HP has been using this method for a while now.

 What OS are you running ?

[jbautista83]

Hi - I haev Windows XP. Tapping F11 (or F10 according to some pages I've seen) doesn't seem to work. That usually takes me to a black screen asking me whether I want to run XP professional or home edition.

From what I've read, the laptop is old enough that HP didn't use that method for this computer.

[HaggisCat]

I have put this on someone else's desk as she is more familiar with XP than I am. What you want to do is to get into disk management and find where all your partitions are on the hard drive. Right click on the one marked recovery and make it active. The next time you boot up it should begin the recovery process.

 I would suggest you wait for a response from her though or someone else with more experience with XP.

 You may go ahead and try my suggestion as I do know it works for Vista and W7_for the most part.

 Sorry I could not have been more help.

[CherylG]

Do you not have any disks that came with the laptop? I believe this model should have come with XP cd and a Drivers & Applications cd ,with possibly a seperate Restore cd.  HP later moved to the option of Recovery partition and Recovery Disks.

You could try here for Restore Disks:

 http://www.computersurgeons.com/SearchProducts.aspx?sbt=n5415&bkm=Results#Results

[1923]

i received a recovery disk from HP it went through every thing until the end. It keep saying wait don't  turn off until prompt. will it has been during that for 12 hr it will not tell me to turn it off

[UniProg]

Hello 1923,

I'm not sure what type of notebook or OS you have, but here's a link to a thread that may help http://goo.gl/fpzT9


For more specific help, please post your Product number (please don’t post your serial number). Here is a link to help you find it:
http://goo.gl/txzML


Thanks,