HP Z230 SFF - Recovery Manager not booting

[boney2]

I have a HP Z230 SFF. It is currently running Windows 10 but originally shipped with Windows 7.

I am trying to restore the PC to its original factory condition, but HP Recovery Manager doesn't seem to want to start. When I press F11, a message appears on the screen for a split second saying "unable to boot from hard drive" (or something similar) after which Windows boots up as normal.

I have owned the PC from new and, to my knowledge, the recovery partition should still be intact. I have never knowingly modified it.

Any suggestions?

[DGroves]

your recovery partition was/is for windows 7, you can not run it under windows 10, so while it's intact it's not useable under win 10

is your win 10 install older than 30 days? if under 30 days, you can roll back win 10 to win 7 in most cases

did you make a recovery disk before you upgraded to windows 10?

you can try reinstalling Windows 7 (the same Windows version which came installed with your laptop) and see if you can then press f11

personally i would stay with win 10 as support for win 7 is ending soon.

[boney2]

But I also have a Z240 SFF that shipped with Windows 7, was upgraded to Windows 10 and the Recovery Manager worked just fine for that.

Why would Windows 10 prevent it from running on the Z230?

I'm not actually trying to run Recovery Manager from "under Windows 10", the option to run Recovery Manager is right there in the bios options.

Surely the recovery partition should be independent of whatever operating system I currently have installed.

What possible use is a recovery partition if it relies on the other partition that I'm trying to recover?

[DGroves · Accepted solution]

the windows 10 install wrote a new MBR, or Gpart partition information this is wht the recovery manager will no longer work

[boney2]

Ah, okay.