hi everyone. i am planning to upgrade my hp pavilion dv2820tx to windows 7 from the factory installed vista home premium. however i wanted to create the recovery disc just to be sure. after doing so i found out that the first disc i created is corrupted and i couldn't make another one. i have read that are some people able to reset this limit. i have tried using resetrmc.exe but it didn't work for me. can anyone please help me? i just don't want to upgrade to windows 7 without a chance to go back to vista if anything wrong happens. thanks a lot!
Your HP must not have a manufacturer installed partition"D". My HP9000 came with hard drive divided into "C" and "D" partitions. I have installed Win7 on the "C" partition and the "D" partition is untouched there by saving my WinXP environment intact if I need to go back to it, which is highly unlikely, I like Win7 real well.
it does RedSpider. if you have read my post i mentioned there that i managed to create a set however the first disc got corrupted. i have tried the following steps: "find hpcd.sys, there will be 2 copies one in windows C:\WINDOWS\SMINST and other in E: rename hpcd.bak on both and you can make another set" how ever the hpcd.sys is not present in the C:\WINDOWS\SMINST. i managed to delete in drive D: where my partition is installed. that didn't work. help please oh great ones!
Hi All I have not done this for over 8 months, so let’s see if my memory still active… LOL THIS WILL ONLY WORK IF THE RECOVERY PARTITION AND THE SMINST FOLDER ARE UNTOCHED. The HP recovery process works by creating recovery disks from the recovery partition via the Recovery Manager, selecting to Create Recovery Disks. Once it has created the disks, it places a marker on the recovery partition and the OS partition, but if the OS partition is RESTORED from the Hard disk recovery (not using DVD disks) it only has the one on the recovery partition left. So…. Go to the following locations and delete the file HPCD.SYS (this is a hidden file) First: For 32bit OS- C:\WINDOWS\SMINST For 64 bit OS- C:\Programs Files x86\SMINST Second: Root of the recovery drive. (this could be D:\ E:\ or F:\) Once both markers have been deleted, you should be able to go back to Create Recovery Disks and create another set of recovery disks, you can keep going back and create many sets as you wish by deleting the HPCD.SYS file each time you need to create a set of recovery disks. Best Of Luck St0neD
Thanks St0neD! I really appreciate the reply... however I have done that and still I have the limit. Any other suggestions? Thanks!
Finally got it to work!!! just followed the steps from St0neD's post and it worked like a charm. I used winrar to open the folders and locate the hidden files. Resetrmc.exe didn't work but it was supposed to do what I have manually done. Just be really careful when doing this. You don't want deleting files that should stay there otherwise you would have a dead recovery. Thank you again St0neD!
hi i made 3 windows 7 HP recovery disk for my dv6 before i cleaned it off and went from x86 to x64, once u goto windows 7 you wont ever need to go back to windows vista just make sure all the drivers are up for windows 7 on HPs website, i just wanted to ask a Q does any one know were i could find a x64 recovery disk for windows 7 for HP , im using windows 7 x64 now but i wanted the HP version with the power settings and wallpapers and the other built in extra that come with the perinstalled copy of windows and i wanted to use my HP oem key but it come up invaild windows the normal install think they only work with hp restory disk of windows 7
The only way that will work is if you get DMI data for HP PC w/ W7 and get the recovery disc from that PC as well. HP recovery discs check their custom dmi data which have the p/n, s/n, bid and featurebytes strings. If say you change your motherboard and do not set the DMI your recovery discs do not work!
Hi! I've tried to do all the steps as shown, but it doens't work I've a Windows 7 64bit laptop. I've not found the SMINTS folder in C:\Program File x86, and also in the HP recovery folder. I also modified the folder option panel to not hide the hidden files and folders. What can I do? thank you..
OEM recovery disks are crap. Just tune your system to your liking, then create an image with acronis or ghost or reflect, restore this image whenever you feel the need to refresh. Advantages of this over recovery disks: -Bloatware removed. -Updated drivers. -User tweaks saved.
You're going to be a whole lot happier if you get the Windows 7 version you want via a link found on this forum, wipe your disk and make a fresh install of Windows 7. Be sure and get all the drivers you'll be neededing from the HP site beforehand. Once you use 7 a bit you'll never go back to Vista. 7 has a built in system image creation facility that works extremely well. Use it to make a backup image once you get to the stable config you want. That image will, in effect, be your recovery disk.