Restoration Incomplete - Can't find drive specified

[Jompra]

Hello

The HP recovery Media fails to complete repeatedly despite being verified on completion by HP Media Creation Tool.

History:

I created USB recovery media to a new and blank flash drive using your HP utility and verified the creation process.

I removed the recovery partition following your instructions and using the HP utility. This partition had to be removed as I use D:\ as a data drive across various devices and need to preserve relative link paths. I believe the choice of D:\ for a recovery drive was a very poor and ill thought out choice on the part of HP and needs to be changed in the future.

Having recently used the HP recovery media created by your utility it constantly fails to complete with the error “The system cannot find the drive specified”  which appears to be C:\windows \system32\cmd.exe

This is obviously a deficiency in your recovery media creation and whilst I can perform a clean Windows 10 installation the choice of the correct drivers to unlock the full original potential of my particular device build is mind boggling.

Please make available a specific driver collection and support software collection for my specific hardware build so I can complete the device restoration to full operation or, alternatively, make available for download fully working Restore Media to overcome this problem.

I am very well aware that this is a deficiency of HP’s making and deserves to be publicised in order to warn those considering HP as a device. Such restore problems have inconvenienced many owners over several years and these users deserve a better fix other than deflecting them to Re-install Windows and work out what specific drivers and hardware support software they need to restore full operation.

I have saved the recovery log file and can forward if required.

[Echo_Lake · Accepted solution]

@Jompra
Thank you for posting on the HP Support Community.

Don't worry as I'll be glad to help, I have a few troubleshooting steps we could try to fix the issue:  

Let's try once again the HP Cloud Recovery Tool which allows you to download recovery software to a USB drive. You can use the downloaded recovery image file in order to install the Windows operating system. ( please FORMAT your USB flash drive or use a new USB drive to create a new recovery image )

• Click here: https://support.hp.com/in-en/document/c04758961#AbT3to perform System Recovery (Windows 10) 
• Click here: https://support.hp.com/in-en/document/c06162205 to Use the HP Cloud Recovery Tool (Windows 10)

If the recovery tool fails to load recovery image onto your hard drive then you need ship the computer in for repair in order to load Operating System. 

Hope this helps! Keep me posted for further assistance.
Please click “Accept as Solution” if you feel my post solved your issue, it will help others find the solution.

[Jompra]

Hello,

I am now reinstalling Windows 10 from a generic recovery USB, following that I will follow your instructions to the HP Cloud recovery utility and respond again after that.

Jompra

[Jompra]

After following your instructions and using the cloud recovery media I am back to the beginning of the circle with a factory restored machine.

I need to free D:\ in order to preserve relative links across my devices and previously I followed your instructions to do this on the following page - https://support.hp.com/gb-en/document/c00810279

I remember when I did this previously and after creating a recovery USB Drive Windows would not allow me to Shrink C:\ reporting an error but even so the maximum shrink size suggested was around 233GB which is much more than the OS needs.

So before I attempt to repeat that process to regain D:\ for my data and possibly waste my time I would be interested to hear why the Shrink may not have worked on my previous attempt and why the Shrink size minimum suggested was as high as ~233GB?

Basically I want a bloat free machine with D:\ around 850GB for data, I did notice during the recovery process there are 5 other partitions reserved for proprietary use but in total only using around 13GB.

If you can point me to a previously written guide to achieve my goal then that is all I am missing at present.

Regards,

Jompra

[Echo_Lake]

@Jompra

Thank you for posting back.

To get the answer to this question, you cannot have windows OEM OS copy without bloatware,
 

To create a new partition, the hard disk drive (HDD) or solid-state drive (SSD) must contain unallocated space that is not part of an existing partition. Shrink the volume on an existing drive to create unallocated space, and then create and format a new partition.

• Click here: https://support.hp.com/in-en/document/c03375417 to know more about creating a new partition on the C: drive

Hope this helps! Keep me posted for further assistance.
Please click “Accept as Solution” if you feel my post solved your issue, it will help others find the solution.

[Jompra]

Problems are finally resolved and D:\ has been removed, I now have a device I can work with.

[Echo_Lake]

@Jompra
thank you for posting back. 

Glad to hear that the issue is resolved. If you need any help, feel free to reach out to us.

Have a great day!