hello all
ive just been working on someones laptop (a hp 550 laptop)
the reason was that her antivirus ran out and she had become badly infected , so i suggested a complete recovery/install
and then the problem ,
it had a hidden hp recovery partition (great) ahh but no recovery manager installed and on boot it didnt give the option for enter recovery process by pressing f11 , so i downloaded it from hp and installed but it came up with "no recovery partition found" doh!! and no recovery discs made or supplied , now what ?
well i guess only option to get the recovery discs from hp but at a cost of course ,
well me not being happy with hp at putting a hidden recovery partition on and then not being able to access it, i decide to do some searching
and found a little program called "super grub" that boots from disc,is a FREE downloadable iso and lets you see and access and BOOT from any partition or system including hidden recovery partitions , i downloaded it from here Super Grub Disk Download - Softpedia
ive just accessed the hidden partition and completed a full recovery using it, FANTASTIC . i just thought that this is so useful for all those people that havent got recovery discs or didnt make them on first boot and have been directed back to the makers to buy the discs when they have a copy on a hidden unaccessable part of the drive,
i will say "read the help files" enter the "support menu" to find the boot tools , and its not too hard to understand.

i sincerely hope this helps many users and repairers alike

regards
fixit

p.s. maybe once approved by admin this program can be sticky tagged for future reference by all
thanks

Was this not listed in Programs Fixit?

hi wolfey
no it wasnt
no recovery software on it at all
nightmare ,

regards
fixit

and no way to start the recovery partition from boot either ,i.e. f11 or f10 etc etc
no options for it
just boot device and enter bios

fixit

Have a read of this mate.

http://h20000.www2.hp.com/bizsupport...ctID=c01604120

yeah read that yesterday mate ,hence no recovery discs made ,
and without any recovery manager software installed or able to start the hp recovery partition,even when i installed the hp recovery manager software it couldnt see the hidden partition?
and nothing on boot about a f button recovery start proceedure
it sort of left asking hp for the discs ,which she did and they sent her to buy them from www.best2serve.com an eprefered partner for hp and upon putting the product id code, in came back with "sorry not found " try again .

i have rated hp for laptops in the past as pretty good ,but not in this single case
i guess you always get one dont you ?
anyway accessed the partion and booted it with super grub ,great little program
and alls recovered now ,and still no hp recovery manager installed on a complete recovery ,
so just making back up with acronis now

fixit

It seems to be a great little prog Fixit that's true.

I really have no idea what HP were thinking about on that occasion as to not provide any kind of Recovery solution, quite mad.