Recovery file in Recovery Partition is missing its icon.

[LRoi]

Hello, I own an 11-year old HP Compaq Presario SR5410F. It originally ran Windows Vista 32-bit Home Premium Edition which I recently upgraded to Windows 7 Home Premium Edition 32-bit.

I always had a Recovery Partition on Drive 😧 --- The capacity of the partition is 9.16GB, and, 7.96 is occupied with 1.20 free.

When you click on the D drive you would see one file. It was the Recovery File and it was identified with an icon that resembled a hard drive.

After upgrading to Windows 7 this image didn't change.

I was browsing my computer to look for files to delete to gain some space. I found something new to me under Favorites called, Recently Changed.

I looked it up online to see if it was safe to delete the contents, since, there was a lot of listings when you clicked on it.
I found a discussion thread that reassured the person asking that it was perfectly okay to deleted the references in that location, so, I started to delete them on my machine.

One was a reference to the D partition. Well, after I did that, I clicked on the 😧 drive and it showed an empty drive; i.e., no files or folders to list.  Also, because I didn't think I was doing anything wrong, I emptied the Recycle Bin soon after deleting the reference.

I immediately clicked on the drive in the left pane of the browser window and selected, Properties. The amounts of used and free space were exactly the way they should be.

Also, I temporarily changed the View Options to show hidden system files and a series of files and folders were displayed. So, I don't think anything is really missing from that partition.

I then installed a freeware version of Recuva Uninstaller and it found the item that was deleted. I restored it but it no longer looks like a hard drive. It has a basic plain sheet of paper with the upper-right corner bent down as the icon.

When I open the file in Notepad it produces this information:

N¯
Ð[n7ÃgÔ
D : \ R E C O V E R Y

The file that was recovered is named, $IQ5OEUW.

First off, why would the OS allow me to delete anything from that Recovery drive?

Second, is this file named above the Recovery File I am interested in preserving?

And lastly, is it now corrupt?  Did the undelete program fail to interpret it and its associations accurately?  How can I restore its original look and integrity?

Now for the bad news - I don't have backups.  I always had a set of Recovery Discs when the computer ran Windows Vista.  Plus, Vista Home Premium Ed. did not provide the ability to perform a system backup.

I know the machine is now running Windows 7 and that the Recovery Partition is not essential anymore, especially if I make a System Backup and a Repair Disc under 7, which, I assure you, I am definitely doing very very soon.

Its the principle of the thing; it bothers me and I want it back to normal just so that I always have that option of performing the factory install if need be.

Can someone help me to understand what happened and how, if possible, I can get that file to appear the way it should and operate the way it should?

Thank you so much.

Lou

[WAWood · Accepted solution]

@LRoi

Sorry, but I don't have very good news for you ...
Don't know exactly how or why the recovery files got corrupted but you're not going to be able to restore them at this late date.  The only way to restore them would have been using something known as HP Recovery Media and that would have erased your entire drive, reformatted it, and recreated all the partitions, including the recovery files.

But ... HP has not carried Vista recovery media for years now, so there is no way to acquire it, anymore.

[LRoi]

Thank you for your response, WAWood.

It is the response that I anticipated.

Oh well, at least I no longer rely upon it.

Lou