Recovery Manager missing Recovery Partition

HP Pavilion Elite HPE-112y PC.
Genuine Windows 7 Home Premium - 64-bit.

:confused

I'm having problems with my Recovery Manager. A couple of days ago it was working fine. Yesterday when I tried to access either the "Software Program Reinstallation" or the "Hardware Driver Reinstallation" to check something out both my DVD and BD drives would open and a message pops up saying:

This system does not have a recovery partition. The recovery process needs to use the set of recovery discs you created previously. Please insert disc #1 now.

I did not create any such recovery discs. I don't know how this happened. When I looked in the "I'd like to take precautions" section of the Recovery Manager the "Recovery Disc Creation" and the "Remove Recovery Partition" are grayed out, but the "View Recovery Report" is still active and there is some kind of report in it. I don't know what it means.

I hope someone can tell me that my Recovery Partition is still there and I can restore it.

:cry

 

Right click Computer > Manage > Disk Management and post a screenshot covering both top and bottom halves. Then we can tell you what you have and what you do not have.

 

:confused

Is this what you are looking for?

 

Thanks, and that confirms that your recovery partition is indeed there and in good health. Something though is preventing the recovery process from seeing it. It's not a machine I'm familiar with so atm can only ask whether you have explored all the recovery options HERE.

 

:-o No, I haven't tried anything yet. I wanted to ask for advice first before I tried anything.

I want to be very cautious before I try anything drastic. :eek

If I think about doing a system recovery, how do I protect certain software from being removed? Like Kaspersky/Safe Money, Windows Defender, MPC, Mozilla Firefox, etc.

 

You can't. When you do a system recovery the disk reverts to how it was when bought. This means all your own software disappears and all your personal files disappear. If you want the capability to take your system back to how it was say last week/month then you will either have to learn how to use Windows Backup, which you already have, or install third party imaging software.

 

I was wondering, I have my Seagate Backup Plus Drive. I already have all of my personal items stored on it, so I don't have to worry about losing them, but could I move those software that I want to keep onto it. Like the Kaspersky/Safe Money, Netgear, MPC, Mozilla Firefox, etc. And if I can, How would I go about doing it? Or will going through the System Recovery process show me how to do it?

Please, I hope you will be patient with me, this is a very important decision to think about. And its freaking me out to even have to think about putting my computer all the way back to the beginning. :eek

 

Sorry mich but that just isn't possible. You cannot extract applications, store them somewhere else, reinstall Windows and then add those apps back. It just doesn't work like that. If you reinstall Windows, which is what HP Recovery does, you have to reinstall and reconfigure all your software too. Total nightmare and takes days.

If Win7 is booting and running normally you need to get to grips with Windows Backup, and Windows Help and Support will assist you with that. It will take a snapshot of your system and store it somewhere else - your Seagate drive being ideal. Backups made that way can restore your system to exactly how it was the day the backup was made.

Alternatively you can try a third party app for this, which most ppl choose to do. Acronis is excellent but not free. There is a free cut-down version of Acronis that ppl with Seagate or WD drives can use, and there are a number of other free apps that do a good job and are rather easier to use and more practical than Windows Backup.

 

I'm not trying to make any changes yet, but I thought I would take a look at the System Recovery in the Recovery Manager. When I click the System Recovery button this is what I see.

Restore your computer to its original factory condition.

Your computer does not have a Recovery partition.

If you want to continue the restoration process, make sure you have inserted disc #1 and then click "Yes" to continue, or click "No" to exit.

Is this going to be a problem if I decide to try to restore my system?

 

HP computers allow you to create just one set of recovery CDs. If the computer won't start you can then either boot from your CD set or by pressing a function key, F11 I believe, and either should trigger the recovery. If Windows does start you can trigger the recovery process using the recovery manager, the one you have been looking at, and that uses the recovery partition on the hard disk, as does F11.

In your case something seems to have gone wrong with this setup. The computer thinks you have already created your recovery CDs so has deactivated that option in recovery manager and it also thinks it can't find the recovery partition although we can see for ourselves that it is still there. There is still the F11 option though and that may or may not work. If you try it and it does work you may or may not get a chance to stop it, so probably best not to try it atm

But my view is that once you have created a proper backup strategy along the lines I've already mentioned you no longer have any need for HP recovery. In fact I can't think of any situation in which you might want to use it. I removed mine years ago and use the space for something more useful.