recovery media and media creation

[Chetan Dashora]

My hp recover manager cant locate my recovery partition
I bought laptop with pre-installed genuine windows 10. Can I create a new media for windows installation through media creation tool and install windows using it.Will my windows be activated automatically on connecting it with internet (as it was pre-installed and my device must have a digital signature).
Why is the size of recovery disk ranges upto 22gb while media creation software require only 4-5gb?

 

[OldGuyGeek]

1. Yes, you can use media creation tool, but download a fresh copy. Also it will not contain the specialized drivers for your system. It will install generic drivers instead. Then your system should eventually check for the correct drivers and automatically install them. It may take a few hours or days. You can visit the HP site and see if they have new Windows 10 drivers for your system
2. Yes, as long as you were running Windows 10 on the same system, it should activate fine.
3. The difference in sizes are probably due to compression. When Windows downloads the installation media, all the files are compressed. I not 100% sure on this, but the recovery drive probably stores them uncompressed to make the recovery process faster.

 

[Neemobeer]

There is a difference between Windows Recovery media and HP Recovery Media. The Windows media is basically a ramdisk WinPE environment with tools to help repair your windows install. The HP media contains imaging software and a factory image of your system to be able to roll it it back to factory settings. Windows INSTALL media is several gigs and contains a compressed image file and tools needed to install Windows. The Windows media creation tool will create a generic Windows install media, it does not contain your license key information.

 

[BIGBEARJEDI]

What he said...!!

Keep in mind, if the HP Recovery Manager app can't find your built in Recovery partition, you may have inadvertently destroyed it by using various partition tools such as Partition Magic, Disk Management(Windows utility), or another 3rd party partitioning tool . You didn't mention doing this specifically, but if you didn't do this intentionally, there's a good chance your hard drive has failed if you can't get to that HP factory recovery partition. Also, if you got a nasty virus in there, they often disable factory Media Creator programs intentionally so that you CAN'T run the program to create the Recovery Media. The time to 'make these discs or usb is when the computer is first opened from the box when it is brand new, not later when a catastrophe occurs. You can run your antivirus and scan/remove all viruses found, and then download the free MALWAREBYTES antispyware program from Malwarebytes.org to scan/remove all spyware viruses found. This may fix the problem with your HP Recovery Manager, but usually not. The other problem you may have is faulty hardware such as a failed hard drive (very likely given that you can't access that part of your hard drive). You can test your hard drive using these instructions here: Hard Drive Diagnostic Procedure. If the diagnostic for your brand drive returns any errors it has failed and must be replaced!

Of course, once you replace the hard drive, all the factory recovery software goes out the window and you have to do a complete windows reinstallation from generic Microsoft Media, as mentioned, using the MCT tool from Microsoft. A better way to do it is to contact HP either by phone or visit their website and order factory Recovery Media for your exact model HP computer. Cost is $29-$99 US and will arrive in 1-3 weeks on DVD or USB media. This will restore or rollback your computer to it's original condition when it left the factory. Once done, you of course will have to reinstall ALL your programs, and hopefully, you have your data backed up somewhere other than on that computer to external media or a Cloud account such as OneDrive, Dropbox, or GoogleDrive.


Good luck,
<<<BIGBEARJEDI>>>

 

[ragnarok1968]

Not sure if this still applies, if you get your system up and running, you can create an ISO from your ESD (if it applies).
ESD to ISO - Create Bootable ISO from Windows 10 ESD File used for build 10041. Again, not sure if this still applies.

this is from a website back in the days of builds 9926-10258. I used this to create an .ISO file then created a boot usb drive on my Toshiba Qosmio gaming laptop before this one. I also have a media creation tool on my CD card which will create a usb drive if you want a copy. it still works.