[SOLVED] How I resolved the "F11 not working" on a Pavilion dv7-1245dx

[ceez]

Alright everyone, this is my story....

Had Vista Home Premium 64 bit.

Purchased Windows 7 Home Premium 64 bit

Perfomed a clean install of Win7 (I did not delete recovery partition)

I learned that you cannot simply perform a clean install of whatever OS you want on your laptop....the HP Media software that went along with my dv7 would not install on my new installation of Windows 7.  It would extract the files and then nothing would happen, the installer would not run at all.  GREAT.

I then thought about restoring to Vista using the recovery partition.  When I pressed F11 at boot up it would just take me to the Windows boot menu and the option of booting inti my windows 7 installation.

After much reading and disgust with HP (primarily for MARRYING their pre-loaded software with their pre-loaded OS) I found out that you need to mark the recovery partition as your "ACTIVE PARTITION"

Right click on Computer -> Manage.

Go to Disk Management

Find your recovery partition and right click on it.  Choose "Mark Partition as Active".

You will get a warning message about your system wont boot if no bootable OS files are in this partition, click on OK/Yes and continue.

Now reboot Windows 7.

Press F11

Ta-da!  It's recovery mode loading

Once Recovery Manager loads you can follow the steps to restore your OS to it's original manufacturer state.

Now I have not gotten to the state of Windows 7 Home Premium 64bit installation and if it works with the media software.  I am currently typing this up as the Win7 "upgrade" setup is moving along.  I will post my results.

I hope this helps someone out there in the convoluted world of HP OS recovery.

[Kilsi]

Thanks a million, your post was very helpful..

[CherylG]

Were you trying the drivers and software posted for Windows 7 without luck?

http://h10025.www1.hp.com/ewfrf/wc/softwareCategory?os=4063&lc=en&cc=us&dlc=en&sw_lang=&product=3860...

[Hexcoder]

i fallow ur steps but when i go to recovery drive option......there isno mark partion as active option.....

plz help me.

[CherylG]

@Hexcoder

scroll down on the page and download the free Partition Wizard Bootable CD ISO and ImgBurn to burn the iso image to cd and boot from it. Use it to mark the Recovery partition as active.

[Hexcoder]

thanx my brother !

[Hexcoder]

brother i full ur instrution my recovery starts working after one hour of windows installation ,my laptop got stuck i poweroff manually laptop . When i re start laptnp windows was not working.so again by instaling windows from dvd i mark active recovry drive . But when system restatrs nd i pres f11 windows boot manegar appear wd the error thats"windows filed to starts .a recent hardware or sw change migh be the cause.to fix the problem use repair disk etc. I follow the instrution nothing happen. Recovery yet not working ! ! Help me out...plz