HP Notebook: The recovery partition could not be found

[ahmad2080]

Correct jaclaz.....Both are identical now....

FIRST STEP : SUCCESS.......

[Tripredacus]

Sorry, my computer at home died and I have been busy at work fixing that (I brought it in) as well as my regular work things. So not much time to be on MSFN this week so far. And yes my reply were to your older posts. Its obvious you and Jaclaz have moved along a lot further since my last contribution, so stay on track with him for now and see where that leads.

[ahmad2080]

Than another line, either :

or (hopefully ) a message of success.

Let me know how it goes....

jaclaz

SECOND STEP : FAILURE.......

I've done what you've told me to do exactly......

BUT the :

! WARNING:Recovery partition could not be located

was the result.......

and both F11 & Recovery manager still cannot see the partition..

@ALL HP TECHNICANS:

WHAT DOES MBRINST.EXE NEED TO SEE THAT STUPID RECOVERY PARTITION????

Edited April 8, 2009 by ahmad2080

[jaclaz]

[and both F11 & Recovery manager still cannot see the partition..

Try sending me the new resulting MBR.

Even if you won't believe me a small step in the right (supposedly) direction has been made.

You should now be able to see "Press F11 for recovery partition" when booting.

I also need the bootsector (16 sectors) taken with HDhacker of both your and your friends "Recovery partition" (choose logical drive and the appropriate drive letter).

jaclaz

Edited April 8, 2009 by jaclaz

[ahmad2080]

Try sending me the new resulting MBR.

Even if you won't believe me a small step in the right (supposedly) direction has been made.

You should now be able to see "Press F11 for recovery partition" when booting.

I also need the bootsector (16 sectors) taken with HDhacker of both your and your friends "Recovery partition" (choose logical drive and the appropriate drive letter).

jaclaz

I'll send you the new MBR...

I do believe that it's a right step....It's just driving me crazy!!!

At startup, pressing ESC gives a list of all F's poosible....So the "Press F11 for recovery partition" was there before and after the MBR modification that we made.

NET result --> NOTHING CHANGED

I'll send you :

-MY new MBR.

-My friend's first 63 sectors & boot sectors of both the C & D partition. [Form the other friend with the new HP laptop]

Should I try the previous using MBRInst.exe in my X:\ partition with its associated MBR.INI ??

Edited April 8, 2009 by ahmad2080

[jaclaz]

Should I try the previous using MBRInst.exe in my X:\ partition with its associated MBR.INI ??

Why not, NOW you have way backs (at least up to this day trial).

Worst that can happen, it won't boot, and you can restore the last working MBR.

jaclaz

[ahmad2080]

Should I try the previous using MBRInst.exe in my X:\ partition with its associated MBR.INI ??

Why not, NOW you have way backs (at least up to this day trial).

Worst that can happen, it won't boot, and you can restore the last working MBR.

jaclaz

Should I use it with the same options as before?

If it didn't work should I try using other options?

EDIT:

This time running MBRINST.exe gave me the error message " Masterboot record strings too long! Your strings are 53 Bytes but the Master Boot Record has only 18 Bytes for strings" + the "Recovery partition could not be found " result.

NOTE: Before jaclaz idea the error message was: "Master Boot Record Strings too long! Your strings are 30 Bytes but the Master Boot Record has only 18 Bytes for strings"

MBR grew up from 30Bytes to 53Bytes........Does that make any sense?

Should I try MBRINST.exe from X:\ and MBR.INI of my friend's laptop?

Edited April 8, 2009 by ahmad2080

[ahmad2080]

I've contacted HP again....

This time they gave me this tool :

http://h10025.www1.hp.com/ewfrf/wc/generic...=reg_R1002_USEN

As he said, the tool upgrades the recovery manager. If you opened the above link you'll find that:

(Release Date: 2007-09-15 !!!)!!!! .......And it's called UPGRADE.

As usual, it didn't work.

[jaclaz]

As said, now that you have alternate ways to boot, you can try everything you wish to (within limits ).

In my experience, however, the infinite time and monkeys approach:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Infinite_monkey_theorem

has rarely produced a good result in an acceptable time, and often has also prevented the "right" solution to be later implemented.

For example installing the "upgrade" you may well have messed up things in such a way that there is NO way back anymore, one thing is to replace a MBR (for which you have a sure way back, and another thing is to apply an "upgrade" dated BEFORE the files you have, I like to define this behaviour "asking for troubles" )

Of course it is perfectly possible that the install of the "upgrade" carried no consequences at all....

NOTE: Before jaclaz idea the error message was: "Master Boot Record Strings too long! Your strings are 30 Bytes but the Master Boot Record has only 18 Bytes for strings"

MBR grew up from 30Bytes to 53Bytes........Does that make any sense?

Rest assured the MBR is ALWAYS 512 bytes long, the SPACE (number of bytes) available in it for "Master Boot Record Strings" can change depending on the type of MBR (i.e. if the MBR code is longer, there remains LESS available space for the text connected to messages).

Try counting the characters in the messages in MBR.INI:

; TRANSLATE

STR_START="\nPress F11 for Emergency Recovery "

;STR_ERROR="\nMBR Error\n"

STR_ERROR=\nErr1

;STR_BS_ERROR="\nOS Missing\n"

STR_BS_ERROR=Err2

;STR_PRESSAKEY="\nPress a key.\n"

STR_PRESSAKEY=Err3

12345678901234567890123456789012345678901

Press F11 for Emergency Recovery Err1 Err2 Err3

And subtract from it the "fixed part"?

12345678901

Press Fxx for

That would make 30.

1234567890123456789012345678901234567890123456789012345678

Press F11 for Emergency Recovery MBR Error OS Missing Press a key.

That would make 47.

It is possible that without a MBR.INI the "embedded" values lead to 53....

There are a couple of bytes in the MBR you re-created following my instructions that differ from those on your friend's (working) MBR, that may be the key, but I need some time to do some tests....., you need some patience.

jaclaz

[ahmad2080]

As said, now that you have alternate ways to boot, you can try everything you wish to (within limits ).

Try everything I wish? I don't know what should I try!

For example installing the "upgrade" you may well have messed up things in such a way that there is NO way back anymore, one thing is to replace a MBR (for which you have a sure way back, and another thing is to apply an "upgrade" dated BEFORE the files you have, I like to define this behaviour "asking for troubles" )

Of course it is perfectly possible that the install of the "upgrade" carried no consequences at all....

Actually I didn't have a choice; I wanted all of this hassle to end as fast as it can. So the " You need patience" advice did not come in time. As a conclusion we can say that (this time) it's your fault not mine .

However, I've learned from my previous mistakes; there is no need to freak out from a small upgrade , I can say that it didn't affect anything. If that is not true, I can simply restore the previous (or should I say NEXT) version of the recovery manager software using either: Microsoft system restore or A full system recovery which of course reinstalls the software.

Rest assured the MBR is ALWAYS 512 bytes long, the SPACE (number of bytes) available in it for "Master Boot Record Strings" can change depending on the type of MBR (i.e. if the MBR code is longer, there remains LESS available space for the text connected to messages).

Try counting the characters in the messages in MBR.INI:

; TRANSLATE

STR_START="\nPress F11 for Emergency Recovery "

;STR_ERROR="\nMBR Error\n"

STR_ERROR=\nErr1

;STR_BS_ERROR="\nOS Missing\n"

STR_BS_ERROR=Err2

;STR_PRESSAKEY="\nPress a key.\n"

STR_PRESSAKEY=Err3

12345678901234567890123456789012345678901

Press F11 for Emergency Recovery Err1 Err2 Err3

And subtract from it the "fixed part"?

12345678901

Press Fxx for

That would make 30.

1234567890123456789012345678901234567890123456789012345678

Press F11 for Emergency Recovery MBR Error OS Missing Press a key.

That would make 47.

It is possible that without a MBR.INI the "embedded" values lead to 53....

There are a couple of bytes in the MBR you re-created following my instructions that differ from those on your friend's (working) MBR, that may be the key, but I need some time to do some tests....., you need some patience.

jaclaz

Ok, I'll try Tripredacus idea changing the smallMBR usage value and see if anything changes.

@jaclaz

Do you need anything from the NEW hp laptop? I think that I'll have one more chance (today)to take what I want from it......then .

And do you need anything else from my laptop?? [No, that one is available all the time, just

asking.. ]

And at last... my question: Your previous instructions, do they actually replace my MBR with the other in MBR.ini ? Is that the only way to do so? Does MBR.ini contain the partition table?

I'm asking that because I beleive that the WHOLE problem lies in the position of the recovery position in MBR. IS that accurate?

Hope you reply soon (just following your advice to be patient...you can't blame me ....)

[Tripredacus]

If use smallMBR doesn't work, try this in MasterBootRecord instead:

STR_BS_ERROR="Missing OS\n"
STR_ERROR="MBR Error\n"
STR_PRESSAKEY=" "
STR_START="\nPress F11 "

Also you can take out the lines starting with a semi-colon ( ; ) because they are comments. My mbr.ini files do not have those comment lines in them. :\

[ahmad2080]

HURRAY,HURRAY,HURRAY.........

At last this topic reached the post that says:

PROBLEM SOLVED

I'll say it again:

PROBLEM SOLVED

and

PROBLEM SOLVED

AND TO EVERYONE WHO SHARED IN THIS THREAD : THANKS VERY MUCH.....

I GUESS THAT YOU ALL WANT TO KNOW WHAT HAVE I DONE....HA?

FOR NOW.....THIS IS ALL WHAT I CAN SAY......

I'M PREPARING A FULL FEEDBACK THAT COMES WITH A PRIZE FOR ALL OF YOU......

AHMAD.

[ahmad2080]

Ok.....I'm calm now..

@Tripredacus:

Changing smallMBR did make the error message dissapear, but the problem of not finding

the recovery partition was not resolved. Thanks for your help.

NOW:

This is how I made the recovery manager see the recovery partition:

Requirements:

1) A friend that has a similar HP laptop.

2) HDhacker from HERE.

3) A hexeditor from HERE.

Simply, I used the bootsector of the recovery partition (D:) that I captured (using HDhacker) from a friend that has a similar laptop. I captured mine too. Then using (HEX EDITOR NEO) I compared between both, small differences were found. So I took a deep breath and wrote the D: boot sector of my friend on mine(You can load a the captured boot sector then write it on yours using HDhacker).

Surprisingly, it worked. When I launched the CD creator, it opened the DVD drive asking me to insert the DVD to begin burning the Recovery disks.

Easy, isn't it??

CONCLUSION:

The Infinite monkey theorem that jaclaz mentioned should be modified to Finite monkey theorem !!! and it seems that it needs LESS time to reach the desired result.

However, the result is not PERFECT.

Yes, I can make my recovery disks now – although I didn't……TROUBLE SEEKER?? Yes, I am - but the F11 still doesn't work, when pressed while booting it says "Disk error press ctrl+Alt+del to restart".

So in order to restore that function I tried some MBR modifications using MBRINST.exe, none succeeded. AFTER burning the recovery disks, I'll try to write the C: boot sector as well and post the results. Now with HDhacker and the bootable USBStick that I created using jaclaz instructions, I fear nothing.

NOTE: Both vista1 and vista2 options in the booting

menu using the bootable USBStick directs me to the recovery manager to make a full recovery.

I'm satisfied….I'll edit POST NO.1 to note that this problem has been solved.

So to ALL who have the same problem, I hope that this helps……

And to ALL who tried to help solving this problem, THANK YOU. B)

And SPECIAL THANKS to jaclaz…..

Regards,

Ahmad

EDIT: If you don't have a friend with a similar HP notebook have a look at POST #111 and TAKE CARE.

Edited April 14, 2009 by ahmad2080

[submix8c]

HAH! I suspected that Partition Boot may be one of the culprits. Some kind of flag and "special boot code"...

Maybe I didn't say (long windy topic) but I should have.

You might want to save all the GOOD stuff for the future and maybe other poor soles.

note - be careful with that C-boot-sector...

Edited April 9, 2009 by submix8c

[Niru]

Hi Ahmad .... I have the same problem as u faced.

Is there any way out to get rid of that "recovery partition could not be found" error and create the recovery discs?

I don't have any friend here who has HP+Vista

Please let me know if can be done from my own machine......by changing any files.

Thanks in advance.