restoration incomplete

[legslaroo]

i have a HP Pavilion dv7-6b56nr Entertainment Notebook PC I used recovery manager to do a system recovery and when it was done it said restoration incomplete. I bought the system recovery disc kit and it still says the same thing. what do I do now? my son put windows 7 ultimate on here for me but it doesn't work right and I don't like it. I just want my computer back the way it was when I bought it.

 

[TrainableMan]

From what I can find, this computer shipped with W7 Home Premium, is that correct? If so then Ultimate should do everything Home Premium did plus a few more.

I have no way of knowing why your restoration would not work. If it were me I would back up all your data, then format the hard drive, and try again.

Since you say you bought the HP recovery disks I would hope they include some support so I suggest you contact HP support if you are unable to make them work properly.

 

[legslaroo]

yes my computer came with the preinstalled windows 7 home premium . i dont know alot about computers but i did all the hard test on the drives and everything came back 100% passed. im just thinkin maybe i did somethin wrong when i tried to restore my computer to begin with. ive checked the C drive and the system reserve in the disc management and it says everything is healthy and on the C it says there is 696.53GB free space and on the system reserve it says there is 66MB free. i dont know if that helps with anything or not but theres gotta be somethin else i can do to rest the computer back the way it was. I don't understand why the 3 disc recovery kit didn't work. one person told me to set the date back in BIOS to 1/1/2012 and then boot back up with the 3 disc and my installation will begin and it will complete but im kinda afraid to do anything because if it comes out incomplete again I wont be able to use my computer and ill have to wait till my son comes back into town to help me...no I don't like the windows 7 ultimate he put on here because I don't think its the real deal. things don't wanna run right.

 

[TrainableMan]

Quite honestly I'm not sure what setting the BIOS date would have to do with anything, I'm not aware of any restore disks that require the computer to think it is any special date and that is the only reason I can think you would need to do such a thing.

Could you answer a few questions please ...

Was your hard drive replaced? I have heard some reports where the manufacturer must have done some tweaks regarding the hard drive to make it "theirs" and then when the hard drive has to be replaced for any reason there were issues using the restore media. If that could be the case then HP would have to tell you how to handle this new hard drive; usually they want to sell you one from them but that is just ridiculous and if pushed I'm sure they could tell you what you need to do.

Also, have you backed up all your data? Because a restore to factory settings should wipe out all your data.

Do you know your W7 Home Premium product key (I am only looking for a yes or no, please do not post your product key online ... ever!)? It may be on a sticker on the computer. Also, is this a laptop? Some laptops use SLIC technology and if so then the Product Key should be stored in the BIOS.

So your computer is still running Ultimate even after you tried to restore and it ended up incomplete? It must not have really done much of anything ... or did you son put Ultimate back on after the restore failure?

You say things don't run right ... could you be more specific? Is windows waiting several minutes to boot up? Is the desktop background black with a Not Genuine message in the bottom right corner? These are signs that your son had a trial or invalid key. But if it is something else ... other programs not working, for example, then if you could provide more details about that it might point to other issues, possibly hardware failure. You mentioned it says healthy but have you run a diskscan ... if you select the drive and right-click on properties, then chose the Tools Tab and "check the drive for errors"?

 

[legslaroo]

no I didn't replace anything. everything is exactly the way I bought it. no I didn't back up anything. after I made my rescue disk which is 4 of them they would go thru the whole process and then when it was all done the computer would reboot and say restoration was incomplete. I tried them a few times but always ended up the same. yes I have my product key. my son put wondows 7 ultimate on it with his usb flash drive or thumb drive what ever they are. and he got it somewhere on the internet idk where. the computer boots right up no problems with any of that. its like a lot of pictures come in all pixeled and distorted and some times they will come up in a tiny little black outlined squared with a cpl. letters in it..idk what they are off hand. its like the pages don't upload all the way and a lot of stuff comes out with part of the page saying this page cannot display but you cant get it all the page and I refresh a lot to try and get the page to load. ive downloaded all the drives for my computer at HP but still does it. there is no recovery manager program on it either. I tried to download it but when its all done I cant find it...like I said idk a lot about computers so bare with me...lol...I know I have and they were fine but ill do it again and get back to you with the results.

 

[legslaroo]

ok i ran the test. took forever..lol...anyways everything came back fine no problems and then a thing said NTFS clean..also forgot to mention in last post that yes I did make my rescue disk and after trying several times they didn't work so I ordered the restoration kit from hp. it came with 2 disc and 1 application and drivers disc...I just don't understand why they didn't work. my computer is less than 2yrs. old and I only use facebook and yahoo and do my mail and shop and pay bills and look things up that I need to. so I really haven't even learned much about it yet and I never even got to use all the programs it came with yet. I love all the programs so far that it came with and im hoping ill get to use them again and the ones I never got to use yet. maybe im not doing something right. all I do is put disc 1 in and then restart the computer and put the 2nd one in when it ask me to and then the application and drivers disk and all said and done I get the restoration incomplete. I don't click on anything or open or change anything before I do it either.

 

[TrainableMan]

Since you bought the restore disks from HP I would hope they include some support. If it were me I would call them and say "Please, I bought these restore disks from you and every time I try to use them I get an error saying restoration incomplete. What am I doing wrong, walk me through this because, I bought these to restore my computer to factory settings."

Quite honestly it is supposed to be as easy as "boot up your computer to the first restore DVD and then follow the instructions on the screen". Sorry I don't know what else to tell you.

Me personally, I would back up any data to a flash drive or external hard drive then I would format the C: drive and then boot to the first Restoration DVD and follow the instructions.

But formatting the hard drive is completely destructive - all the data, programs, and Windows 7 OS will be gone and at that point if the restore DVDs don't work you have nothing working. (I mean the truth is, a complete system restore is completely destructive as well so it is just a matter of having it run to successful completion).

 

[legslaroo]

ok...well I guess ill try your suggestion. what else do I got to loose...lol...ill make sure I back up everything just incase I cant get back in...like you said it should be easy and simple but its bein a pain....thank you for all your time and help.