Accessing HP Recovery after Windows 10 installation

[cole_minnesota]

I recently inherted an HP laptop from my sister and the hard drive is incredibly slow. I suspect that this has something to do with clean Windows 10 installation that was performed on the machine, but I have no real way to confirm. The computer seems to be relatively stable other than the hard drive always being at 100% usage, no matter what. I would like to recovery the original Windows 8 installation to both restore the performance and restore the HP functionality that was lost with the upgrade (keyboard shortcuts, HP software). I'm having trouble figuring out exactly how to do that. Here are the details:

• Windows 10 Home clean install with all recent updates that are available through Windows update
• I see a partition for the HP recovery (a few GBs) still on the hard drive
• There is no HP software on the current configuration that I can find
• I can't seem to access to BIOS during start-up either, but I'm not terribly familiar with HP laptop configuration
• There are no noticable issues with the laptop other than hard drive speed

I won't have the laptop in front of me until later this evening, so I will respond to any follow-up questions at that time. Here are my basic goals in order of preference and I need help achieving either of these goals:

1. Restore the laptop to factory settings.
2. Repair the hard drive performance to normal operation (drivers update, restore access to BIOS to check settings).

I have tried finding Windows 10 drivers for the chipset and other hardware but anything that I have tried has not corrected the performance issues. I have been able to install HP Support Assist but no other software seems to work with Windows 10 on this laptop. Again, I have not been able to access the BIOS. 

Thanks for your help. 

[Paul_Tikkanen]

Hi:

To get into the BIOS on most HP PC's that came with W8 or newer, you have to turn on the PC, tap the ESC key at the beginning of the HP welcome screen to get access to the menu of options.  Select the F10 system setup option to get into the BIOS.

After a clean install of Windows (not using the HP F11 recovery option), the recovery program that access the recovery partition is gone, so basically you have wasted space on the hard drive as far as the recovery partition is concerned.

However, you have nothing to lose by turning on the PC, tap the F11 key at the beginning of the HP welcome screen, and see if you can factory reset the PC.

If you believe that W10 is the problem with the PC (and it very well could be), you can clean install W8.1 by using the W8 product key in the notebook's BIOS.  W8.1 is a supported operating system.   Here's how to do that...

Install W8.1 by creating the Microsoft installation media...Your notebook came with W8 64 bit, so make the W8.1 64 bit installation media.

https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/software-download/windows8ISO

Only if you are asked to enter a product key during the installation process, use this generic key.

This is the generic key for W8.1 'standard:'

 334NH-RXG76-64THK-C7CKG-D3VPT

If you had to enter the generic product key, manually change the generic product key to the W8 'standard' key in your PC's BIOS in the PC settings menu.

If you had to enter a key, after you get W8.1 installed, you will need to run the free utility I zipped up and attached below, that will show you show the W8 product key in your PC's BIOS.

I have also zipped up and attached below, the Microsoft tool which hopefully will transfer the ISO file to a DVD or usb flash drive so it is bootable.

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

https://support.hp.com/us-en/drivers/selfservice/HP-ENVY-m6-Notebook-PC-series/5296045/model/5312255

You may as well delete the recovery partition at the beginning of the installation process, and reclaim disk space.