Recovery Unavailable?

[rustyhackleford]

I'm trying to fix a friend's computer's hard drive failure. The recovery partition is broken so i cannot restore from it, and the drive is getting I/O errors so its a no go. I've looked for recovery media but cannot find a way to order the recovery disks from HP. This friend is not savvy enough to have made recoveries when he unboxed the pc. Can anyone point me in the right direction?

[Paul_Tikkanen · Accepted solution]

Hi:

HP no longer sells recovery media for that model series but you can still get a kit from this non-HP vendor.

http://www.computersurgeons.com/p-20897-windows-7-64-bit-recovery-kit-c4g69av-for-hp-pavilion-deskto...

If you can find and read the W7 Home Premium product key on the PC's case you can make plain W7 Home Premium installation media by downloading the 64 bit ISO file from the link below (toward the bottom of the page).

https://getintopc.com/softwares/operating-systems/windows-7-home-premium-free-download-iso-32-bit-64...

Use the Microsoft tool that I zipped up and attached below to transfer the ISO file to a DVD or USB flash drive so that it is bootable.

Then you can install the drivers and available software from the PC's support page.

https://support.hp.com/us-en/drivers/selfservice/hp-pavilion-p7-1200-desktop-pc-series/5187022/model...

Since the ISO file is a retail file, and the product key is OEM, you may need to use the Microsoft automated phone activation system to activate the W7 installation.