HP Recovery Media - Will it work for me?

[Paul_Tikkanen]

Anytime.

Glad to have tried to help.  Sorry it didn't work out.

[nikothenomad]

I greatly appreciated your help.  By the way, I set up a Bios Update / Recovery USB and decided to have my mom leave it in the slot while the computer ran through its repeated seemingly infinite loop.  After a few hours the stick lit up so the computer found it temporarily.  Who knows.... maybe there is hope.  In the end I know that it would have just been easier for me to remove the hard drive and repair it by connecting to my computer but I am 2000 miles away and I cannot walk her through those steps. So, for now...  it has been interesting.  Thanks, again!

[Paul_Tikkanen]

You're very welcome.

I don't think the hard drives are removable in most HP Stream notebooks.

They have tiny 32 GB eMMC drives that are part of the motherboard.

[nikothenomad]

Oh that is interesting about the hard drive.  I hadn't looked into it yet.  The Latest:  Since the computer was getting stuck in a loop figured at this point it could not hurt to put in the BIOS recovery / update and the Windows Restore USB's while it was looping.  I didn't realize that one of the old USB drives that my folks had has a lite on the end that flashes when in use.... Well, at first it flashed just a little bit quickly but then it went into a period where it was flashing a lot more now and then and for longer periods of time.  Since the other one didn't have a light on it we switched them and it lit up in the other USB port too.  So.... does that mean that the USB ports are being seen and the computer is trying to access them but what is on the drives isn't right?  Is there something else I should try on the USB stick?   Thoughts?

[Paul_Tikkanen]

It's possible the PC was trying to boot from the flash drive.

But why it isn't working, that would be impossible for me to say.

When you run the media creation tool to transfer the ISO file to a flash drive, it will tell you if the process was successful or not.

I have never used Rufus, so I don't know how that process works.

[nikothenomad]

Thanks, it did say it was successful and I've done it multiple times just to be sure.  So, I got to thinking she doesn't really need windows I just need to get her to a place where she could read her email and browse the web a few times a day.  I thought about a mini linux and started looking into them.  I thought I'd test it out on my hp on which the keys work to access the bios and boot order, etc.  And yet, no matter what tool I use to put the ISO onto the drive I still can't boot from my own working computer.  So, now I wonder if I am missing something when I make the USBs?

[nikothenomad]

Paul... if you are still out there.... or anyone else with input....

So, after five days of an endless 'repair' loop, Mom's computer - after sitting on a blank blue screen for twenty minutes or more - decided to provide us with choices!

For starters... the f keys on power on still don't bring a response so I was happy to get to this point at least.

With the Windows Repair / Recovery USB in the slot our first selection was ' use USB or other device'  - That then brought us to only two choices - solid state hard drive or internal hard drive.  Well, she has neither but solid state is closest to emmc so we picked that to see what happens.  We are giving the computer time to make a decision while we research other ideas.  

By the way, early on in this process (over a week ago) we tried, refresh, and there were not restore points, etc. so we do not want to do those again.

There is an option at one stage that says you can change UEFI settings.  I am wondering if in there I can tell it to look first at the USB always?  That would give us a leg up on these bootable USB's instead of going the route where the hard drive selections are not what we want.  

Thoughts appreciated?