Windows reset no longer works after using Windows 11 ISO/USB to load

[BrandonHale]

HP17-cn1053cl AKA 4S324UAR

Windows 11 Home installed

My company purchased 25 of these, refurbished in Aug of 2022. So no remaining warranty. At times a user will turn on some form of encryption (maybe by default, unsure) and then the laptop is returned with a cloud account and password, with encryption turned on. The user does not remember the login, or is no longer available to retrieve the online key that will allow a standard Windows "reset" to occur. So it asks for the long encryption key, and will not reset using this method without the key. 

When we attempt to reload the unit form a Windows 11 ISO/USB drive, several things occur. First is it will not reload without Intel drivers (it will not see the SSD), until we load those drivers at the time of installation. I have the drivers from HP, the Windows install seems them and installs just fine. Then the reload continues and Windows is installed.

The problem then is, the unit will not perform a factory reset of Windows 11. This has been tried before and after installing all updates. We assume that it has something to do with the reload from the USB drive, but that is the only working solution we have found to get Windows 11 working again if we do not have access to the online account for the encryption key. When the machine is told to reset, for instance by holding Shift-restart, it no longer has the reset this pc option. The first screen that comes up is different than before, and asks what country in a multi-column format. No matter how we try to reset, the normal reset options are no longer available. 

We can, reload from a USB drive, but that requires more working knowledge than most of our employees have, so the unit has to come back to central office to reload manually from USB. 

I apologize for the long narrative, and yes indeed, we can get the machine working again. But I fear this will happen on a majority of HP laptops as we go forward, causing much delay in getting these machines back up and running again. 

Thanks.

[Paul_Tikkanen · Accepted solution]

Hi:

If you can reinstall W11 on the encrypted drive (which I didn't think was possible without replacing the drive), then you should be able to use the HP cloud recovery tool to create a bootable USB recovery drive that will reinstall Windows, the drivers and the software that originally came with the notebook.

Here is an info link for how to use the utility.  You will need a 32 GB USB flash drive for this.

HP Consumer PCs - Using the HP Cloud Recovery Tool in Windows 11 and 10 | HP® Customer Support

If you use another PC to create the bootable recovery media, then you will need to enter the notebook's full product number in the tool's search window, which is:  4S324UAR#ABA

[BrandonHale]

Thanks! Worked. The part I was missing was the HP Recovery Tool, rather than the Windows 11 only ISO. All installs and will perform a Windows reset (until someone/MS encrypts the drive) and then forgets the login info. As to installing Windows 11 on the encrypted drive, during the install process, where you are presented the drives to install Windows on, you cannot install on the encrypt. drive, but you can delete the drive and reformat and load on that partition. However, you lose the capability to have an end user do a reset pc, which was why the question was posted. Thanks again. 

[Paul_Tikkanen]

You're very welcome, and thanks for the info on how to reinstall Windows on an encrypted drive.