Recovery Problems

[NickinSR]

Had issues after forced update to Win 10, which worked fine for a while.

Then during some updates computer began locking up in rotating dots trying to install them.

(Yes I waited a very long time)

Could get it to work by powering down & up a few times.

Then at one point lost user profile, could not recover.

Could get into Administrator safe mode & tried computer system recovery which did not work,

Gave up & ordered Win 7 recovery USB from HP.

Selected boot from USB.

Goes through first 2 Image Recovery Preps & then says Windows cannot find "F:\System.sav\Util\RStone.exe"

I pressed OK & Recovery prep is complete screen came up.

Clicked Continue & Recovery Manager started again at the beginning.

The 2nd time around I pulled the USB at the error message & let it restart.

It now comes up to a Recovery is Complete screen.

I press Finish & it boots to a BOOTMGR is missing. Press Ctrl+Alt+Del to restart, which I can do until the end of time with no results.

Any suggestions?

[visruth]

Hi,


I'll try to help​ a bit:

Did you successfully upgrade and activate to Windows 10 already before these issues started?

Please tap away F2 key as soon as you power on laptop, perform extensive hard drive and memory tests from System Diagnostics. Let it finish.

Let me know the results


Regards

Visruth

[NickinSR]

Tried F2 - all tests passed.
This computer came with Win7 installed.
It updated to Win10 & was working fine except when occasional, not all, updates tried to install. I could always get it to work after lockups when trying to install these updates.
One day I turned it on & it gave me a "user profile service failed the logon" error. I tried all the remedies I found online with no luck.
I finally gave up & ordered a Recovery USB to revert it back to original factory Win7 installation since I couldn't get it to recover with the computer recovery.
Now the recovery USB doesn't seem to be able to reset it back to original factory settings.

[visruth]

Your hard drive Recovery partition is corrupted following Windows 10 upgrade. So you cannot use built in recovery.

At present I'll suggest you do a clean install of Windows 10 using Microsoft windows media creation tool by creating bootable installation USB.
Follow this tutorial: https://www.tenforums.com/tutorials/1950-clean-install-windows-10-a.html

Since you've already activated successfully before with Microsoft servers, Windows 10 will be automatically activated after clean installation while connected to internet.

[NickinSR]

So the Win7 Recovery USB that I purchased for $40.00 from HP won't work to reset my computer to orginal Win7  factory settings?

[visruth]

I've no idea why HP provided recovery media is not working for you.

You may have to contact official HP technical support for that.

This is a peer-to-peer support forum where all the members helping others are end users like you

HP maintains no official presence here

The alternative workaround for clean installing Windows 10 Home is what I suggested in my previous post.

You can do the same for Windows 7 Home Premium 64 bit, see HP expert Paul Tikkanen's suggestions here:
https://h30434.www3.hp.com/t5/Notebook-Operating-System-and-Recovery/want-windows-7-back/td-p/592555...

Note: To clean install Windows 7, you should be able to clearly read all 25 characters of product activation key from COA sticker pasted on laptop