Will recovery disks work on my new hard drive

[HaggisCat]

@ Greg_ White

  Yes that will work, but the version of Vista that you are downloading has to be exactly the same as what was installed on the machine when new.

 Install it as a trial and when it's all up and running then enter your key. Choose "Change product key" when it's time, do not choose "Activate Windows now"

 Start with your "chipset" driver first when installing your drivers.

[KenNatATX]

So Everyone is seeming to have a relative easy time with this. I on the other hand a former support tech and hardware specialist for another manufacterer am having a nightmare. Yes im a cheap my wifes 500GB hd apears to have crashed she only occupied approx 8GB all pics so i due to budget contraints bought a 160GB WD drive and Restore will not run. Is there a shortcut or cheat to get around recovery manager software and just reinstall windows 7 at this point id say with or without the HP recover partition i just want the thing to run

  ps its a Pavillion DV6 and its giving me the message when starting factory restore option that HD on this computer is smaller than factory shipped cannot continue.

[pjdutch]

I should know this, but...

Putting in new HD on a mini 311 notebook.  No CD Drive.  No boot file to at least get to where I can begin installation of restoration files saved on another computer.  Trying to find something already saved, but nothing I put on a USB is booting up.

Have a file some where I can use so I can get to Windows 7 and reinstall?

Much appreciated.

Pete

[ThunderSnow]

My hard drive failed just last week. HP sold me a WEstern Digital as replacement. 5 minutes to install, antiquated recovery discs, however, took 3 installs to get hard drive installed w/windows vista 64 bit. Then 4 more days to install all of the updates, just to find out SP1 is no longer supported so had to SP2 and more updates. HP should have sent me Windows 7 as I paid the same amount. And why do they not replace hard drives under recall? All of these in Pavilion dv7-1135nr have or will fail! Is it to keep us from having evidence for court? Not to mention having to replace all of the other programs.

Hard drive Smart- HP PC care-ware did not warn of failure. Burned recovery discs would not work. Even now can't read them.

HP should have upgraded me to Windows7, and given me the postage free. Surely less than they charged. Both CD's and small hard drive could have come in one package! They should have discounted deeply or paid for bad drive too.

Now the new HP PC Care-ware says battery bad, never any mention of that before!

What's the deal-lio HP? Not real good business here! Let's not forget the 2 days just to download CS5 either w/more programs to go!

[محمدملكاوي]

هنالك ارقام على بعض الحروف في لوحة المفاتيح الخاصة بجهاز الكمبيوتر  كيف اتمكن من تشغيلها

[withouthelp]

My hard drive went bad on my Pavilion DV4-2160us so I ordered a replacement from HP with the recovery CD s (windows 7) the drive is a 320g 7200rpm sata drive. After I replaced the drive I put in the recovery cd and it starts the Factory Image Recovery by reformatting the window partition of the hard drive. Then it starts copying files required to restore the hard drive it gets to 26% complete and errors out with a

                COPY FILE FAILS

From: E:\Preload\Base22.wim

To: C:\RM\Image\Base22.wim

I clicked ok and tried again and the same error came back. Can anyone help?

[ThunderSnow]

Go to the web site listed on the hard drive wrapping plastic and download the upgraded software to format the hard drive. Then do the install. That is what I found to cure the same problem.

Let me know if that helps. The manufacturer also has hard drive test and lifetime helpers in this download. You will need to get a usb or CD to copy to and have it in on start up to get it to work however.

TS

[cz016m]

Just so you know, I replaced my spinning 320 GB Seagate HD on my HP Notebook with an OCZ Agility 60 GB SSD. The recovery disks would not complete the process. Kept giving an error no matter which configuration I used. I then installed my own copy of Win7 just to prove that the recovery disks DO NOT WORK for a full OS install on a new HD. I have yet to read one forum post where a person has successfully installed Win7 on a NEW hard drive using their HP recovery disks.

[dadio501]

Well you can now, because I have just successfully done precisely that.

I have a HP Presario CQ56 Laptop, bought Christmas 2010, and do have to say it has been an absolute pleasure to work with, it speaks volumes for the quality of HP products.

However, around 2 months ago, all of a sudden it started to freeze up ocasionally on starting, usually within the first 5 minutes.

My mouse would move around the screen, but I couldn't click on anything.

It was at that moment I then noticed the small white activity light on the left-hand side was blinking too consistently, once every second.

My only option was to press the power button to turn it off and go through the process of starting Windows normally again.

Occasionally it worked just fine next time, but sometimes would again freeze, with the light just blinking.

As I didn't use my Laptop very often, I store all my precious photo's and music collection on it mainly, I decided to bear with it.

After a couple of weeks, I then noticed my Hard Drive was running at 100% CPU and was impossible to use.

It didn't matter what I tried from the numerous articles on the subject, and believe me, I tried loads of possible solutions, nothing worked.

I decided as my Laptop is really only used for storage purposes now, to turn of Windows Update (the culprit) completely, not advisable but at least my Laptop was now running at 10%-15% CPU.

Eventually my Laptop worsened and became unbearable with it's constant freezing, time to use my Recovery Discs I thought.

After several attempts, my Laptop remained on, no freezing, no problems, so popped my first disc in and shut down.

I went into Bios, set it to run from CD and waited with baited breath for it to restore my Laptop, it only got to 8% and froze!

My only option was to turn off and boy did my troubles start!

Boot manager was corrupted (easy fix), No Operating System (again, easy fix) and the dreaded blue screen with corrupt files, plus loads more warnings and errors.

No Laptop working, no help worked from the numerous sites I read up on, so I attempted to run a different set of discs I had created a year ago and it worked.

However, I still had freezes, just the same as before, but at least WU was functioning as it should and not hogging my CPU.

Time for a new Hard Drive, so I purchased a like for like drive, not bigger, not smaller, not a fancy SSD, just 250MB Sata II, precisely what my original Hard Drive was, keep it simple.

So what to do next, how about cloning my old hard drive, even with it's errors, surely it must still copy?

Forget it, Macronis Reflect is as good as any but didn't want to know, some error about Read 22-32 failed, again no adequate solution available!

Time to be brave and try my Recovery CD's!

After 6 minutes, that's all it took to install my new drive, I turned my Laptop on, quickly pressed ESC to change my Bios to run from CD, pressed any key when prompted to load and it worked perfectly.

I actually had more trouble with a Microsoft pop-up saying my copy of Windows is not genuine, but a quick call and using their automated service soon fixed that.

Thankfully I had the sense to back-up all my files etc a couple of months before I hit problems on an external drive, so I lost nothing.

I now have a perfectly working Laptop, tried and tested, so silent and so pleased with HP and Recovery Discs.

Oh, and for all those that recommend checks through Command Prompts, SMART tests and the like, don't concern yourself with them too much, my old Hard Drive passed the lot with no errors every time.

It was only HP's test programme that actually stated my Hard Drive failed tests.

So yes, you now have a forum write-up that DOES state installing Win7 on a NEW Hard Drive using Recovery Discs DOES work.

[1907fan]

Hello everyone and David. 

Please excuse me as I'm new to the community. 

I have HP Pavilion Desktop 595 with Windows 10 , 16 gigs of memory i7 latest processor. 

I want to replace the hard drive and already created a USB recovery disk. My question is; 

- can I use this disk to reload windows onto new hard drive? and what exactly is in this USB?; just windows or original software. 

-How can i just re- install windows without any additional original software? can i do this by obtaining th windows key and just load windows? 

Thank you in advance for your answers. 

Ersen.