How to Restore the HP Recovery Partition

By Darren Johannsen

HP makes 48 million PCs every year.
i Justin Sullivan/Getty Images News/Getty Images

HP computers come with a preinstalled system repair and recovery utility on a special partition of the hard drive. If your computer's operating system is corrupted or damaged, the System Recovery Manager can be used to return the computer to its original factory default state. If this partition is erased or corrupted however, you will have to restore both the special partition and the operating system using an HP recovery disk. HP recovery disks can be created through the HP Recovery Manager while the computer is operational. If you didn't create a recovery disk before the recovery partition was damaged, you can also order a copy from the HP website.

Step 1

Insert the recovery disk into the computer's optical drive and then restart the computer. Press the "Enter" key when you see the message "Press any key to boot from CD or DVD." Wait for the System Recovery Manager to load.

Step 2

Select the "System recovery" and then follow the displayed instructions.

Step 3

Select any important files on the computer that you wish to backup when you are prompted to do so. The recovery process will erase data from the hard drive, but will allow you to backup important files before doing so.

Step 4

Insert the supplemental driver disc when you are prompted to do so, then click "OK" or "Next." You may not have a supplemental driver disc if you created a recovery disk yourself while the computer was operational, in which case you can just click "Next," as the correct drivers are included with the recovery disk.

If you are using recovery disks ordered from the HP website and a supplemental driver disk was not included, click "Skip" or "Cancel."

Step 5

Follow the remaining prompts to complete the system recovery process.

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