HP Recovery partition problem

jstro

New Member
Messages
8
Hello.

I have an HP laptop that needed to be upgraded to windows 10, having Windows 8 originally. The owner updated on his own, but the system halted every time with a BSOD making reference to an AMD driver file.

I installed Windows 10 almost clean, meaning, wiped out all the partitions except the HP OEM Recovery just in case.

Turns out, the problem with windows 10 is the driver for the AMD board, and it does not seem to have a fix yet.

Now my biggest problem, I cannot for the life of me boot from the OEM partition to restore Windows 8: I cannot set the partition to active from windows 10, and other 3rd party tools also don't give me that option. I've run out of ideas, there's no recovery disks from the owner and I am starting to feel the pressure. In all the time I've had installing operating systems I've never came across a situation like this where a simple driver makes impossible to install the system.

Does anyone have any tool/recomendation to force booting from the OEM partition?

Thanks in advance.
 

My Computer

System One

  • OS
    Windows 8
assign a drive letter to the recovery partition, you are looking for winre.wim and install.wim / install.swm(s)

as there is usually two oem recovery partitions - the one you need is 10-20 GB in size
 

My Computer

System One

  • OS
    Windows 3.1 > Windows 10
    Computer type
    PC/Desktop
    System Manufacturer/Model
    Dell XPS 8700
    CPU
    I7
    Memory
    24 GB
Thanks.

yes, the recovery partition is 20GB in size, almost filled (2GB free). I made a backup of it just in case.

Then, what should I do with install.wim? What can I open it with?

Thanks again!
 

My Computer

System One

  • OS
    Windows 8
Depending on the other files within that partition - the install.wim is the factory OS Image..
If needed it could be applied to the OS partition using DISM to restore the factory OS..

In my sig below there is a link to a PE Bootable Rescue Disk...

Create a bootable USB from that ISO -
there is a program > WinNTSetup
Point the program to setup your HDD and then to that install.wim
the program will reinstall that OS
 

My Computer

System One

  • OS
    Windows 3.1 > Windows 10
    Computer type
    PC/Desktop
    System Manufacturer/Model
    Dell XPS 8700
    CPU
    I7
    Memory
    24 GB
Hello again.

Well, I'll try to explain how I did it:

I had the hard disk with the unallocated space and, at the end, the recovery partition, 20GB, with the files.

I started your WinPE, WinNTSetup3, and proceeded like this:

1) Location of windows installation files (install.wim) pointing to the recovery partition, Z:\preload\install.wim
2) Select location of the boot drive, the app itself had Z (Recovery partition) with the 3 flags on green (MBR, BOOT part...)
3) Select location of installation drive: As the rest of the disk itself was not partition, I created one from within WinPE as logical, gave it a letter, and selected it.
4) Edition: Was greyed out with "Drive C" and the right field as "Mount installation drive as C:"


Result:

Started installing, almost at the end it gave "BFSVC Error: 0x1F A device attached to the system is not working", and when the laptop rebooted it said that there were no bootable devices.

Im guessing I F'ed up probably in the boot drive (The recovery partition itself???) or maybe even in the selection of drive.

Thanks for everything.

PS: The sad thing is that I am at work again and have to wait to test it out, I barely made it in time to see the end of it.
 

My Computer

System One

  • OS
    Windows 8
Well, the good news is I tried with the correct option: Repartitioning wit 100MB EFI drive, the rest C:, and the HP recovery was installed.

The bad and inexplicable news is, even with this factory recovery, my problem with Switchable Graphics persist and I get the BSOD once I restart. Up to that point, the two graphic adapters (AMD/Intel) present code 43.

Now I'm desperate.

Thanks.
 

My Computer

System One

  • OS
    Windows 8
my problem with Switchable Graphics persist and I get the BSOD once I restart. Up to that point, the two graphic adapters (AMD/Intel) present code 43.

Explain...

Does the PC BSOD upon startup ???

What does Device manager show for a Graphics adapter ?? Microsoft Basic Display ??

Did you allow Windows Update to locate or download a new Video driver ??

what is the code 43 driver message ??

Also was all the HP programs and bloatware installed with that install.wim ???
As sometimes there is also a custom.wim that will need to also be applied to C...

As, I have not seen the files included within the recovery partition.. So not sure what has now been loaded via the factory install.wim
 

My Computer

System One

  • OS
    Windows 3.1 > Windows 10
    Computer type
    PC/Desktop
    System Manufacturer/Model
    Dell XPS 8700
    CPU
    I7
    Memory
    24 GB
Well, the BSOD happened at the first reboot. Once the system started, it was OK but in the device manager both cards (HD Graphics/8670m) were with an exclamation, and in "details" both were code 43 (Disabled)

The recovery was HP, as their license agreement showed up. Also, I didn't enable internet yet (Absolutely no connection) because I wanted to make sure it was working ok and I know windows update messes up those switchable cards.

Now it's too late for me, but tomorrow I'll show you an screenshot of the files/folders tree. It's possible that the bloatware was not installed, the only thing coming close was the "offer" of HP for McAfee AV.

Thanks.

PS: The switchable graphics problem is what got me here and in the meantime I've tried every possible combination.
PS2: Now I also updated BIOS (When realized the system was not ok) from F00 to F67a (That's a lot of revisions!) but still no BIOS option to change switchable graphics mode, and no difference when installing (On a clean 8.1) the graphic drivers.
 

My Computer

System One

  • OS
    Windows 8
One Suggestion would be to > Disable the ON-Board Graphics via the BIOS
 

My Computer

System One

  • OS
    Windows 3.1 > Windows 10
    Computer type
    PC/Desktop
    System Manufacturer/Model
    Dell XPS 8700
    CPU
    I7
    Memory
    24 GB
Hello.

Here you have the zipped html of the folder tree.

Also, the bios does not have any option regarding the graphic adapters, but Im looking into that, if it's and advanced setting via keyboard shortcut. That would be awesome, disable the ATI and leave the Intel. The guy would be happy.

Thanks.
 

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My Computer

System One

  • OS
    Windows 8
From Microsoft Help with upgrading to Windows 10 - Windows Help, under "Can i go back to my old operating system", "Note: If the manufacturer set up your PC to run from a compressed Windows image file (also known as Windows image file boot or WIMBoot) and included the option to restore factory settings, that option will no longer be available after you upgrade to Windows 10."

If you made your HP recovery discs prior to upgrading to Windows10 you can use those to reinstall the previous operating system.
 

My Computer

System One

  • OS
    win8 64bit
Hello, thanks.

In fact, after the failed upgrade to Windows 10, the recovery partition was there. I just made a copy to an external HDD, and used it to restore later on.

But the thing seems resolved right now. After updating the BIOS, and seeing that the Windows 8 installed still had the problem, I tried to put W10 again, only to happily find out that the problem was gone: W10 itself installed the graphics drivers by itself (Even after disabling the ATI and set the updates to not overwrite any drivers) and it works, no more code 43, no more BSOD. Even though right now only uses the Intel HD, is more than enough to end this for now. Next time I'll install everything and see what's what, but for now I can give back the laptop and rest. It's been a miserable week.

Thank you all for your help.
 

My Computer

System One

  • OS
    Windows 8
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