HOWTO: Work around broken featurebytes to recover an Envy Cruve 34

[pgalbavy]

I thought I'd share my experiences here as I wasted hours on getting this working and while many other posts here were related none matched my specific workaround. I hope that anyone else who has similar issues doesn't end up wasting quite so much of a weekend as I have.

Summary: I decided to Factory Reset my Envy Curve 34 "AIO" as the IR camera stopped working some time back and no amount of guides and driver updates resolved it. My cloud recovery image then failed as the embedded brand name didn't match the recovery image. The solution was to edit one file using an Ubuntu "live" image during the first reboot.

Steps I followed originally:

1. Downloaded HP Cloud Recovery from the Windows Store.

2. Entered my product code and let the image download and write out to an memory card

3. Factory reset (after some backups!) recovery

At this point the recovery failed after the second set of reboots with the message that the brand didn't match the feature bytes ("Envy" != "EnvyAIO"). I didn't save the log file as I was stressed and it needed to be deleted so I would proceed with the recovery again. There are examples of the message posted by other HP forum users here - just not for the Envy specifically.

If anyone is searching, one of the key strings in the error was the stage "Component: Windows 10 PIN Diagnostic Tools ReD - CPS "

So, to my workaround - there were many cycles of trying and searching files which I am not going to detail here:

1. Prepare another (different - you will need both) boot USB/memory card containing an Ubunu or other "Live CD/DVD" image that you can boot from and edit files on the PC SSD/HDD

2. Repeat the recovery process as usual but catch the first reboot after the recovery process has unpacked all the files and says it will proceed to do it's thing.

3. Now press ESC quickly to get into the BIOS screen and select F9 and then the Ubuntu boot media, let it start up and select "Try Ubuntu" to get the live image. If you use a different OS/distro then do whatever you need.

4. Open the file manager and locate the internal SSD/HDD that has the Windows image on it, I found it under "/media/ubuntu/windows".

5. Go into .../SYSTEM.SAV/Utils and locate the file called RStone.dat and open it with a text editor. If you prefer, like me, use "vi" from a terminal.

Now, my issue turned out that in this file there is a section that the recovery sripts use to map the BIOS FeatureBytes (FB) to a Brand/Model and mine didn't match. My BIOS said my "brand" was 7K7N and not 7KgT as expected below ("..." where I removed unwanted lines):

[FeatureByteBrandName]
;Default
@@=Unknow
...
;Segment Consumer & Software Load for Envy AIO (SEG.CON,SL.AIO)
7KgT=EnvyAIO
;Segment Consumer & Software Load Premiun (SEG.CON,SL.PRE)
7K7N=Envy
;Workstation Segment & Software Load Premiun (SEG.WKS,SL.PRE)
7U7N=Envy
...

I got this from the BIOS screen like this (I don't know what is unique and not, so I have airbrushed most of it out):

I then edited the 7K7N line to read like this - WITHOUT touching anything else in this file! -

[FeatureByteBrandName]
;Default
@@=Unknow
...
;Segment Consumer & Software Load Premiun (SEG.CON,SL.PRE)
7K7N=EnvyAIO
...

Saved the file, rebooted while removing the Ubuntu media and let the recovery continue as normal on the next boot. It worked. My IR camera is still missing in action, but at least my PC is back. I did have the option of going vanilla Windows 10 from Microsoft - which I did try during the stressy period - but I wanted the right drivers out of the box.

Your PC/Laptop may be different, but HP may give you a similar headache. Go find this one file, match the FB code like above and it should, I hope, work for you too.

Now, as to *why* my FB is different to what HP thinks it should be is another matter entirely.

[Echo_Lake]

@pgalbavy

Thank you for posting on the HP Support Community.

Don't worry as I'll be glad to help, As we have limited support boundaries in the support community as of now.

I would request you to contact our Support and our Support Engineers should be able to sort this out. HP Support can be reached by clicking on the following link:  www.hp.com/contacthp/

Please feel free to contact us here anytime you need any further assistance. Please click “Accept as Solution” if you feel my post solved your issue, it will help others find the solution.