I have a question... Does anyone know where I could find a recovery disc for a HP pavilion tx2517au.. couldn't find my model when I tried the following website: www.best2serve.com.
This works for ONLY those legit HP owners who own an HP laptop and burned one set of recovery DVD's. After the first set has been ccreated you are not allowed by the HP utility to create another set.
So if you were like me and left your handing carrying case with your recovery discs on the airplane according to HP you one choice. Order their recovery disc set from their website. THis is BS...you bought the rights to a legitmate set of installation discs. So if you have NOT deleted therecovery partion here is how you are able to create one more set of the discs without spending any money.
This information si strictly for legitimate HP owners who have purchased a laptop with an OEM version of VISTA/XP and have lost or ruined their original recovery discs.
Set the folder options to allow viewing of hidden files and folders and show known file extensions.
Search for the following file: hpcd.sys
There will be 2 copies,1 in C:\WINDOWS\SMINST and 1 in E:\
Delete both copies of the hpcd.sys files.
Run the HP recovery disk creation utility.
- Mike
By the way credit goes to the website at http://directedge.us/node/24 for providing useful details on how to do this!
Uhm, hey. This was a great help thanks! though I just need to confirm if i'll lost my data from my other drives? do I need to make a back up or will it remain intact?
hey great advice Gazaly really helped me out I created another backup disk following your instructions thanx a million have a good one anyone else needing to create a new backup disk just follow the above post and BAM!! there you have it lol
I have a HP Pavilion DV6 with Windows Vista and I had the same problem.
I used Unreal Commander (something like Total Commaner)
Start Unreal Commander -> Show->Show Hidden Files or CTRL+H
Go to D:\ and search there the HPCD.sys and rename it or delete it
Also go to: C:\Program Files (x86)\SMINST\ and rename or delete the HPCD.sys
Thank you very much, your post really helped me :)
Thank you to all who contributed to this thread and helped me figure out how to run a 2nd DVD Recovery Copy.
I'm guessing both solutions work (deleting hpcd.sys or hpdrcu.prc) depending on the version of Win7 and the model of HP. On my (AMD 64) Pavilion with Win7 Home Premium, I found only the hpdrcu.prc files. However, as Win7 lacks a proper search (Find) feature, some may find it hard to find both files; e.g.
1) If you have partitioned your drive, you may have removed the drive (letter) for the Recovery Partition. As a result, my search with the Everything tool didn't find the file-name on the un-lettered partition. You need to use diskmgmt.msc to Add a Letter for this partition.
2) If you are ultra cautious and chose to rename the *.prc files (instead of deleting them), Win7 does not give you confirmation of successfully renaming them. For peace of mind you can use the DOS Command - CMD in Run - and navigate to the two drives and folders. Using the Attrib *.* command, you'll see both your files renamed, if that was your intention.
Great info Gazaly and INXS9000RPM. On my HP DV7 with Win7 Home Premium I found both files and was able to rename them with Windows Explorer. One of the files was on my Recovery Partition and the other one was on "C:\ProgramData\Hewlett-Packard\Recovery" folder but I had to UNHIDE the "hidden files" and "protected files" on Windows. After that everything worked like magic!!! Thank you so much!!!
Go to the hp web site and search for contact hp. Call them. To my suprise they answered pretty fast. I got my disk for $21 in about 3c days. Good luck!
I'm in process of creating a recovery disc and got message that I can create only one set. After rading these post I looked for .sys file. I can see this file in C:\windows\sminst folder but there is no E drive in my laptop. Morepver there is a HP_Recovery(D:) partition and I'm not able to find this file over there.
I'm still getting the same message that I can only have one set of recovery discs even when I have renamed the original file.
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