Recovery discs work just fine......

[mschieuer]

So, I had a hard drive fail in my HP Pavillion dv6-3257 after only having it for 18 months.  I did create the 5 disc recovery set the first day I had the machine.  Today I replaced the HDD and put the recovery discs in and they went through all 5 discs without any errors.  I go to reboot and it says that there are no bootable devices.  I'm no idiot, but within the first 8% of the install it said it was "formatting the disk".  So did it not format it with the flag that makes the HDD bootable?  I call support and all they want to do is sell me recovery media.  Needless to say this has me thinking this is the best scam ever, don't include support media with your product.  Make the customer waste his money and time making discs and still suck $30 out of their wallet when they really need recovery media.  Needless to say HP can count on me staying away from their products, printers, desktops, laptops whatever.  Not happy with this and much more.  If there is a support engineer looking at these forums, you need to update or at least thin out all the junk on the support site that deals with recovery media because none of the articles I read said anything about recovering your latop with a new hard drive.

Thanks,

[Mumbodog]

Recovery is a long process with many automatic restarts, if you interupted or clicked on anything while it was in progress it can cause this issue, re-run the recovery discs from scratch, be sure nothing external is connected to the laptop and wireless is turned on, do not touch it (besides feeding the discs) until you are asked to setup the PC or user account.

[mschieuer]

Exactly what I've done 4 times already.  The fact is that no matter which recovery option I run.  I feed it all the required discs, it never fails or errors.  And after the last disc is says that the computer will restart and boot  into wndows 7.  The computer reboots and all I get is that the is no bootable device.

[Mumbodog]

All I can suggest is to blank (wipe) the hard drive with DBAN, then try recovery once more

http://dban.org/

If you are using a HP branded recovery disc set, you may need to run this utility on the blank hard drive first, then recovery discs.

http://h10025.www1.hp.com/ewfrf/wc/softwareDownloadIndex?softwareitem=pv-80183-1&cc=us&lc=en&dlc=en

[mschieuer]

Just blew 12 hours on DBAN and trying again with the recovery discs.  So I took this drive and hooked it up to the neighbors machine just to prove it was writing data to the drive.  Sure enough there are 3 partitions on it.  both end partitions are not formatted and the middle has actualy windows **bleep** on it.  Users directory, Windows directory etc.  SO needless to say my install discs aren't flawed.  This is an HP issue.  I'm sure they won't admit to, but would sure as hell sell me $60 set of discs to fix "my" problem.  HP, trust me.  Right now I have multiple choice words to say to you right now.  Once again, this is my last PC.

[mschieuer]

So I go to HPs site to spend another wad of cash for recovery discs on this junk laptop.  And guess what...

error '80004005'

/driver/dr_country_select.asp, line 37

Thats what you get when you try to get install media "sup 2"  SUP 2????  like you {Content Removed: Language Filter Evasion} the first version and had to make a supplement version???  HHMMM  stinks like HP.

[WMDGuy]

Same issue with my DV7. 

1.  Made a working set of recovery disks.

2.  Replaced the hard drive.

3.  Loaded recovery disks with no errors.

4 .  Recovery program restarts and......blackscreen with HP logo, nothing else happens.

Repeated the process twice.  Dont need to buy a set of disks, I need the program to work as advertised.

[mschieuer]

Yup, welcome to the world of **bleep**.  

[mschieuer]

So does HP even watch this board? {Content Removed: Language Filter Evasion}  The can ***bleep*** whatever they want to, but if more than one persons recovery discs don't work and there is a SUPP 2 and I can't order recovery discs online.  This is not only an HP issue, but Microsoft needs to be held to the fire as well.  Because I bet they arent going to give me a copy of Windows 7 for free to fix the utter {Content Removed: Language Filter Evasion} they are pawning off on customers.  Because I can't take this copy of Win 7 to another machine.  My version of Win 7 is for "This" specific machine...  Yet I don't have {Content Removed: Language Filter Evasion} for media. 

{Content Removed: Language Filter Evasion}

[Mumbodog]

No need to get nasty.

This is a user to user forum.

Go here

http://www.mydigitallife.info/official-windows-7-sp1-iso-from-digital-river/

download your version of Windows 7, then use the product key from the sticker to get it activated,

then go here

http://h10025.www1.hp.com/ewfrf/wc/siteHome?cc=us&lc=en

enter your "Product Number" and hit enter to find your drivers.

There could be a slim chance you bought an Advanced Format hard drive, most HP recovery discs do not work this this type of hard drive, the have fixed this on much newer models, but doubt they will go back and fix the older recovery discs.