desk top recovery question

[Babbs2]

I received an error message (can't remember as it flashed quickly then screen went to a statement about needing a recovery disk). it asked for me to insert a recovery disk.  I can't remember if i made one or not. i have had this computer for about 3 years. i have a lot of things on this computer and really need to recover it.  how do I get a recovery disk?

[savvy2]

please do not do something rash to the PC,  and not lose data.

w10 rules is boot 3 times and it tries to run auto recovery, let it go, and work for you.

it can take awail to do the auto self repair, as long as the HDD is good. that is...

good luck to you and , tell what you see on the the screen if the attempts fail.

good day. and happy Holidays/

[WAWood]

@Babbs2 

Let me address this in two ways ...

First, no Recovery Disk is going to recover your DATA -- just the opposite.  The disks from HP do a complete reformat of the Entire Drive -- basically erasing everything.  So, even if you got those disks, you do NOT want to use them.

Second, you say you have a lot of things you really need but apparently, never bothered to make offline backups of any of those things?  That makes anything you do to "recover" the PC at this point risking permanent destruction of those things.  What you NEED to focus on at this point, is doing data recovery from the drive.  And once you get your critical files backed off to USB stick(s), then you can deal with getting the PC working again.

All you will be able to recover at best from the drive is personal data. You will not be able to recover settings, website information (including user accounts and passwords) or applications.

You will also need another drive large enough to hold the files and folders you want to recover because you can't recover them to the old drive.

Your best bet for recovering data now is to do the following:
1) Download and install this utility on a working PC http://www.majorgeeks.com/news/story/recover_data_in_3_steps_with_minitool_power_data_recovery_free_...
2) Connect the old drive, the one with the files and folders you want to recover, to the working PC
3) Connect something to that PC to hold the recovered files
4) Run the data recovery utility to see what can be retrieved from the old drive.

If that tool does not find what you need, an alternative is Recuva http://www.piriform.com/recuva

And, if that does not work well, the best tool out there is this one, but only the demo version is free https://www.runtime.org/data-recovery-software.htm