HP Recovery Manager CD - No recovery partition

[Antonino5]

Hi,

I wish to restore my laptop with the factory oem Windows Vista, maybe for nostalgic reason, i don't know, but i wish to test it.

I have 3 cd rom that were created in 2009 with HP Recovery Manager.

If i try to boot with the first CD, after some minutes of loading, appears the HP Recovery Manager screen with the error "the recovery data has been lost. Use recovery means to restore the system" and i have to restart the pc, without other options.

This happens because I don't have anymore the Recovery Partition?

[WAWood]

I don 't believe their is any way do that -- now.

HP carries recovery media online for their PC, such that you can down load it to make recovery media -- but they only do that for so long.

As far as I know, they have not carried Vista media for many years now.  So now, there is no way to obtain this from HP.

[Antonino5]

Thanks for reply

Sure,

but the 3 CDs are the recovery manager media, and there are no scratches or defect, i never used it. Why they dont work? 
in the years i have updated the bios and changed broken hdd with an ssd. Maybe the recovery media dont recognize the pc for this, and give “general” error or “has been lost recovery file”?

[WAWood]

I have no idea why the CDs would not work -- as I have used such CDs on older PCs and they worked fine.

Try reading other CDs just to confirm that the CD drive works OK.

[Antonino5]

Hi,

I tried other cd/dvd and works fine;

I tried the hp cd medias in other pc and give me the errore "the media is not for this pc".

So, The recovery manager in the cd recognize my laptop, but for some reason i cant proceed with the restore...

EDIT:
Maybe, first, i have to re-install same version of windows vista? 

EDIT #2:
Maybe the error is because the new ssd is smaller (120gb) than original hard disk (250gb). Now i found in the media recovery dvds a file named "CSP.DAT" that contains information about the original hard disk and the various partition size. Now i try to edit this file, and re-try again.

[WAWood]

You're Edit $2 information is the likely issue -- as an HP recovery expects the new drive to be the same size (at least) as the original drive because the first thing it does is try to recreate the original partitions in their original sizes.

[Antonino5]

Hi dear,

after many and many attempts, i am in this situation: the system is recovering!!  Of course, anything could still happen. I don't want to claim victory, but i'm hopeful.

After many attempts to editing the csp.dat with the correct information about the new ssd, the recovery manager still didn't work. 

So, i looked for some old hard disk (non ssd) 2.5, and i found a 160gb hard disk.

I formatted it same way of the ssd ( gparted by live ubuntu cd -> deleted the drive and created 1 primary partition in ntfs )

I tried with the hp recovery media dvd and... go! 

While im writing this post, the progess bar is at 55%, has already requested the second DVD (are 3 in total).

So, the problem was the ssd. Maybe the recovery manager dont recognize this new generation of hard drive.

EDIT: Finish! I'm Very, very happy!

This desktop, the sidebar, Norton, the **bleep**, were my childhood... 

It's weird how this laptop was coming with Vista home premium 32 bit, even though he had 4gb ram. 

In the task manager i can see 1gb of ram in use - in idle - and 6gb of file paging.

Now, i wish to clone this OS, as well as (without hp recovery manager tool) and move it into my ssd.
Now i have again the recovery partition, but i think that dont need of it. I want to clone only the working partition OS, install into my ssd, and then make a dual boot with windows 7 or 10, probably 64 bit. 

Which is the best way to do that?

[WAWood]

What I recommend is the app that I have used for many years -- Macrium Reflect.  WIth it, you connect the second drive to your PC and then, with only a few mouse clicks, you can clone the existing drive to it.  You swap the drives and you are ready to go. Unfortunately, they have retired their free version, so there is only a paid version now.

[Antonino5]

Thanks, i looked for Macrium Reflect and there is a trial  Home edition version of 30 days gratis for personal use.

I want to summarize everything I did, so, if there is/will be someone in the same situation, will know how to solve.

1) How to check if the HP Recovery Manager Media are bad/corrupt?

-  The HP Recovery Manager Media (cd-dvd) works only for the computer for which they were created*. So if they have no scratches or defect, but don't work on your pc, you have to check booting the media in an other pc: it should appear an error about the incompatibility. This means that the utility in the media work, and in 99% of cases you can restore your system.

2) If the recovery media work, why i can't to restore my system?
- You are probably trying to restore the original hard drive backup to a new ssd.

3) So how can I restore my system?
- You can restore your system replacing the ssd with an hdd. This worked for me. Then, you can move your OS to the new ssd, like I did.

4) There are requirements?
- It depends**. In my case, formatting the drive without creating new partition-leaving the entire disk unallocated- the recovery manager wouldn't let me to restore the system. I had to format it first creating a new NTFS primary partition with GParted by using a live ubuntu cd.

I want to specify that in my case, the OS in the media recovery was Windows Vista SP1 Home Premium 32 bit. I don't know if with other version of the system, the media can be restored in a different drive(ssd) than the original(hdd). 
In my case, the original backup media comes from the original 250 gb hard disk, and I restored it on a 160 gb hard disk first, and then moved it into a 120gb ssd. The important things is that the new drive is enough for the backup file.

I want to thank @WAWood, because It helped me understand the source of the problem and then suggested how to proceed with cloning the OS from hdd to ssd without losing data.

I did it successfully with the gratis trial version of Macrium Reflect. Then I done alignment of the ssd with another gratis tool (MiniTool partition wizard), because after cloning the hard disk partition to the ssd, it was misaligned.

Now I created a new partition and I installed Windows 10 Pro 64 bit, with MBR, because GPT only work on 64bit system, and mine Vista is 32 bit.

I can boot Windows Vista in  27-30 seconds, and Windows 10 in about 30-35 seconds after HP Bios logo disappearance. This only because I chose Windows Vista as default OS, and the selection os screen is the classic windows boot manager. 
Total time: 10 sec (about) of HP logo screen + windows boot time. Less than 1 minutes for both systems. This configuration is perfect, for me.

Instead, if I choose windows 10 as default OS, the boot starts with win 10 bootloader and times change: after selecting win 10, the system boot in 10-15 seconds; after selecting win vista, the pc restarts by HP Bios logo screen, and the entire startup it becomes longer.
Total time:
win 10->10 sec (about) of HP logo screen + windows boot time -> 20-25 seconds.
win vista ->10 sec (about) of HP logo screen + time to restarts + 10 sec of HP logo screen + windows boot time -> 60-65 seconds.

I hope that these informations can bu useful for the community.


*In the hp recovery manager media there is a file called "BLOCK.RIN", that contains for which models they were created. You can see it opening with any text editor.

**Looking for information before solving, i found different possible issues, like the expiration date of some driver content into the media recovery. In this case, you have to edit your bios date, taking it back to the time they were created. You can check the exact date of media creation: insert the media in a working computer and check the "last edited date/time" of the files, there will be many files with various date, but if you order by last edited, you can see the last file created. That is the date of the media creation.