Setup Installation :: Resetting PC On New SSD Drive Using Recovery Drive
Jul 16, 2014
I just purchased an Asus R510CC notebook with windows 8 and I bought a SSD drive to replace the current one.
I used Recovery Drive in Windows to create an USB boot drive with the recovery partition on it. I then installed the SSD and booted from the USB. When I get to the option to reset my computer I encounter an error with the following message: "Unable to reset PC. A required drive partition is missing". I already did a bit of research and BIOS tweaking but I can't install Windows onto my SSD.
If you have a recovery drive - that includes the recovery partition - made on one computer, but have a toshiba laptop with a bad drive (but the recovery partition is ok), can you replace/copy the partition on the recovery drive with the recovery partition from the bad laptop HD?
My friend's laptop would not boot, and would not factory recover, reset, or refresh. I tried to clone the hard drive before I started messing with the disc. It would not clone, but I was able to copy the recovery partition to a USB drive.
He never make recovery discs, so could not re-install, but I can borrow the recovery drive that my aunt made for her laptop.
I have a brand new system with an OEM version of Windows 8 installed (Core not Pro)
ASUS CM 6870 2 TB HD 16 TB RAM ASUS P8H77-M Pro Motherboard
The new system works well but I have also purchased an OCZ Vector 256GB SSD and intend to install it as my primary hard drive.
ASUS didn't and will not supply a recovery disk.
ASUS provides an activation key for a downloadable version of Acronis True image. I tried that but their version is not compatible with Windows 8. I managed to get a newer version but it didn't recognize that the SSD was installed.
Next, I used Win 8 to make a recovery drive USB drive thinking that I would be able to do a clean install of Win with it. I had the 2TB HD disconnected and the SSD installed but the recovery drive refused to install Win 8. I either got the message "The drive where windows is installed is locked. Unlock and try again." or "The drive is too small to format" (the wording on the last may not be exact)
I was able to "find" a Windows 8 ISO file. I burned it to a DVD and was able to install Win 8 but it was not a UEFI installation. There were only 2 SSD HD partitions: 1. System Reserved - 350 MB NTFS. 2. 238.13 GB NTFS Healthy.
I then deleted these volumes and followed the UEFI installation instructions in the thread: UEFI (Unified Extensible Firmware Interface) - Install Windows 8 with
Windows installed but it was not a UEFI installation. I got the same partitions as above. At step 6, I only saw the 2 partitions. I tried this process twice with the same results.
The USB stick was prepared using the instructions in this thread:
UEFI Bootable USB Flash Drive - Create in Windows
I think that the USB drive should have had 4 partitions on it but it only has one:
My Acer Aspire A7600U-UR24 came with windows 8. I made a recovery drive by choosing "create recovery drive" in windows 8. After making the drive i installed windows 8.1 from DVD. Some time later I tried to restore it back to factory with my recovery usb. Every time I try I get "windows cannot find a system image on this computer" even though my flash drive is plugged in. I tried booting from the drive, doesn't seem to work. Not sure if my windows 8.1 version not being activated has anything to do with it (I installed 8.1 on 2 computers from the same dvd didn't realize i couldn't do that) . but I think I should still be able to boot from the drive.
I was thinking if the problem is my flash drive, can I somehow transfer the system image from one flash drive to another?
Here's the screens: at this point there should be an option for windows 8 but there's not.
I purchased a new laptop with windows 8 and used the options in windows 8 to create recovery media and chose the usb drive option. I was wondering if I would be able to copy the files in the usb drive onto my external HD; then if I ever need them I could put them back onto a usb drive and reinstall windows 8. I took a screenshot of the files on the usb drive.
I purchased a Lenovo laptop with Windows 8 Pro preinstalled. It came with 500 GB HDD. I changed the DVD Rom with SSD/HDD tray to use for additional drive. I put an SSD in there and installed Windows 8 on it using a USB Recovery Drive, which I don't have anymore. So my current setup looks like this:
After upgrading to Windows 8.1, the license of some software I'm using got messed up and I couldn't manage fixing it, so the only option I've got left is to reinstall/reset Windows. But since the Recovery partition is on another drive, when I go about creating a Recovery Drive, the option "Copy the recovery partition from the PC to the recovery drive" is greyed out. I've got stuff on my HDD, which I can't currently backup so I don't wan't to format that drive. I'm perfectly fine with formatting the SSD, that's what I want.
How can I reinstall/reset my Windows? The only option I see is to install Windows on the Hard Drive (by doing a backup and formatting it first), and then create a usb recovery drive and reinstall again on the SSD, but that's a lot of hassle and I'd need to find an external hard drive for the backup.
I intentionally left the Hard Drive in the original bay (as Disk 0) because of the better protection against falling compared to the added bay in place of the DVD drive.
I need to delete a recovery partition off my second hard drive. I've seen this link: Delete and Remove to Unlock EISA Hidden Recovery or Diagnostic Partition in Vista - My Digital Life but it's for Vista and the final command "delete partition override" doesn't work in diskpart. It comes up saying "The specified command or parameters are not supported on this system"
Yes, I really do want to delete the recovery partition because it's on my secondary HDD, I still have the recovery partition on my C: so I'm really not losing anything ....
just upgraded to 8 from XP. I have a recovery drive for XP. Can I reformat this recovery drive so I can use it to install & recover Windows 8 instead if I have a problem in the future?
I bought a brand new Acer Aspire xc600 today and it had Windows 8 installed. First thing me and my husband did was to try to install win7 (as we dislike Windows 8 for many reasons)... When it didnt work with just putting in the cd and install, we (stupidly without making recovery discs as we thought we would never need it) formated the drive and made it completely clean before installing win7 (which works now). This means we have no Windows 8 recovery disc or E-recovery management program and therefor cant do factory reset and return this piece of crap pc... (We play world of warcraft and my 7year old pc has only been updated once when it comes to graphic card to geforce 9800 and still perform better outside the game).
The performance test of the whole system give the graphics a lousy 5.0 which is worse than my husbands 3yr old graphic card as well! Only numbers that have increased is the RAM and CPU.
I feel disappointed as the graphics card should be better than mine or my husbands and have better performance even if its the "laptop sized card".
So to the issue, is there a way we could restore/reinstall the computer to factory settings with Windows 8 and Acers drivers as it was when we started it up earlier today?
I have just bought an AIO Asus desktop with 1 Tb of storage. The c: (Windows)drive is allocated 100gb and the d: drive 931gb. I just want to transfer all the data from my old computer. This was pretty much all in the folder c:>Users>Myname, but when I try to transfer it all into the same folder on the new computer, obviously with 100gb there is not enough space.
I'm in the process of moving to an SSD and need to create a backup drive in order to repair the BIOS after transferring everything. However, when I try to create one - the create a recovery drive program won't recognize the flash drive I have connected as a flash drive.
I first tried with a SanDisk Cruzer which apparently had a quirk in that it shows up as a hard drive instead of removable flash drive. That seems to be well documented on forums all over the place and there is no fix.
So, I purchased a cheap 8 GB stick (no brand) and Windows (I'm running 8.1 x64) recognizes it as a removable disk. However, the create a backup utility still won't recognize it. I've found some random fixes that have worked for some (such as plugging it into a different USB port) but nothing has worked for me so far. I've tried doing it with the "copy the recovery partition" option both checked and unchecked.
If there's no solution to this wonderful "quirk" of Windows, then is there something else I can do to repair BIOS? Seems like there's not a fix to my problem out there...
EDIT So as of right now, I tried using HPs recovery software which seems to do the same thing as copying over your entire recovery partition. That didn't work either. However..when I had both USB sticks plugged in the Windows supplied utility recognized the SanDisk Cruzer when I checked the "copy the partition" thing
I have a HP Envy 4 Ultrabook and I want to install Windows 8 from scratch, I put the installation files on a flash drive from a DVD of Win 8 I had, but when I go to install it, it says the "We couldn't find any drives". I have tried using DiskPart within the CMD as well, but it only finds my flash drive when I run list disk. Also, my drives are completely formatted, and I accidentally wiped the recovery partition. I tried with a USB of Win 8 Pro, and it was fine, showing all of my drives correctly, but that version is linked to another PC, so I can't install it. Also, I booted into a Linux Mint live CD and tried to install it, it sees my hard drive correctly, but the Windows install does not, I can't figure this out, never encountered it before. Is Linux my only option at this point?
I am trying to upgrade from windows 8 pro to windows 8.1 on a samsung laptop. The download completes and installation starts.
After a while the following message appears "you cant install windows on a usb flash drive with setup"
I am not actually trying to install to a flash drive. I contacted Microsoft and after 5 hours they said that I should connect to the internet with a cable and not by wireless in order to solve the problem (this didn't work of course and I had told them that it was an install problem and not a download problem).
I have a windows 8 laptop and wanted to re install a whole new windows 8 on it. I'm going to use the generic product key than once installed use the one that i found with magic belly bean key finder. I am just worried that it might say something went wrong than have to buy windows 8 so could i partition the hard drive and than once i know the new windows 8 is good than delete the other?
Just purchased a new win 8.1 computer. As you know it only has the system, recovery partitions and a very large C drive containing the OS and whatever programs that came with the computer.
After cleaning up any unneeded programs, I would like to create 2 more partitions besides drive C:
Total HDD Capacity is 1TB
Is the free space on drive C: indicted in disk management an accurate reading?
Is 80G enough for OS and programs plus some spare space ?
I base the 80G on my older win7 computer where I allocated 78G and only used 44G after 4 years . I am sure I can get away with only 60G but I prefer some wiggle room .
trying to reset to factory settings my Dell Inspiron 660s that uses Windows 8. Some how my ex had downloaded a interface to make Windows 8 look like windows 7. It has virus on it that I just want to reset it. I have tried to reset thru going thru change pc settings-to general-to recovery. It gives me an error code of 800....???. So I restart it, hit F12 brings up a boot window where my options are Boot Manger (clicking on this takes me back to my desktop) Boot Setup is the 2nd options, then Diagnostics (which I have run and says nothing is wrong then takes me to my desktop) then I forget what the last option is.
My laptop (Dell Inspiron 2013 64-bit) was playing up today and instead of restarting it, I foolishly clicked on the option to "refresh the pc". i know this would remove all my current programs. I decided then to do a System Restore. Now, all my programs are back, however, the majority of my programs such Firefox, Microsoft Office and such will not even open! I would just like to know if there is anyway to get these programs running again without having to reinstall them all? Furthermore, would I need to reset or refresh my pc as I can not uninstall old programs via Control Panel?
I had one sata drive wanted to add second sata as data drive.i disconnected older hard drive connected new one,installed windows 8 on it,everything went fine.I did not format older drive yet,reconnected it afterwards,changed boot order in BIOS but the second sata drive reads bus number 0,one with operating system reads bus number 1.Is this O.K.?Usually bus number 0 should be the operating system is on.How can I change this?
Alright, I just installed my Windows 8 Pro from a USB drive as I was installing it I was installing Windows 8 on the W:/ drive but once it was installed I came to found out that that My C:/ drive which was originally Windows 7's drive letter now belongs to Windows 8, and now the drive that is now Windows 7's is D:/ is is possible to change it back a W: drive or something? and yes, Windows 7 is the main partition on the system, I'm not sure why it changed but it's actually the first time this has happened.
I had windows 7 installed on [C:] I then split [C:] into two renaming the other half to [F:] I then installed Windows 8 on [F:] and removed C: and gave the free space back to [F:] Now I just have [F:] and I want to rename it to [C:] but I have been told that you cannot with a system boot partition. Is there any way that I could manipulate the drive.
I am planning on building a new computer, and I want to put a 250GB SSD (Samsung 840 EVO) in it to use with 8.1 Pro. However, most of the programs and data I need are still on the old computer's boot drive, specifically all of my STEAM games (none of which I have the DVDs for.)
My question is if I can create symlinks to the old boot drive without losing data on it. This will most likely be a temporary measure, as the drive's a fairly slow 5900RPM Barracuda, and I want something faster, but I can't afford a better one just yet...
Computer specs, GeForce GTX 760 and i5-4670k CPU. MSI Z97-G45 Gaming Series motherboard. bought this from somebody with no windows installed on it. computer came with no cd's. bought a new copy of windows 8.1. i have the computer hooked up to a 720p hdtv with an hdmi cord. everytime i am hitting enter to boot from the device options it just keeps blinking but it wont boot from device. i think since i am using a tv and not a monitor it may be cutting off some other options on the screen on the bottom that i cant see? or is there something wrong with the computer. i believe the person used the computer before me for about 6 months or so and deleted what ever operating system he had on it before giving it to me. read some stuff about possible uefi bios legacy boot but not sure?
I'm a heavy OSX user so I don't know a whole lot about this, but my son uses Windows because he likes to play games. I'm trying to upgrade his boot drive from a 1TB HDD to a 512GB SSD.
Last night I used Norton Ghost to try to make this happen, but after it completed, the SSD is not booting. I swapped it back to the regular HDD and it's fine. So, I suspect I did something wrong since I don't know too much about this.
The top photo shows the settings that I chose in Ghost. I can give an explanation to why I picked those if any one needs to know why.
The bottom photo shows the results of the clone. The top drive is the original 1TB source, the bottom one is the SSD. I had expected Ghost to pull the smallest EFI system partition, but it didn't. The SSD does have enough space for the data.
The recovery partitions on the original drive... I do NOT want those on the SSD. I have a flash drive that I will use to make recovery media. I don't want to waste space on the drive for recovery.
The source and destination drives were connected to a second PC and were NOT the boot drives.
I have a VHDX which I sometimes boot from and sometimes use as a VM in Hyper V. It has Windows installed on the default C: drive.
This is somewhat confusing as the C: may be the original C: drive or the VHDX C: drive (with the original C: drive renamed to H: in my case). I want C: to always be the native boot and T: (for example) to always be the boot for the VHDX.
Can I change the VHDX to have Windows installed to say T:? I was thinking of renaming all instances of C: to T: in the registry and updating BCDEDIT. It is not possible to change system disk in disk management.
If this is not possible can I re-install windows on the VHDX and specify a different letter and C:?
This is how it looks when booting from VHDX:
Code: DISKPART> list disk Disk ### Status Size Free Dyn Gpt -------- ------------- ------- ------- --- --- Disk 0 Online 465 GB 1024 KB Disk 1 Online 931 GB 31 GB * Disk 2 Online 483 MB 0 B Disk 3 Online 65 GB 381 MB
I wiped my pb eastnote TE. I was restoring it to factory settings, i thought id just have put in my usb and it would reinstall everything for me, but it hasnt.. what to do, error mes im getting it ;there was a problem while resetting your pc, all I am getting is a blue screen, but the options they are giving me are not working...
I just bought a lenovo Z580 with windows 8 and I also have a new hard drive coming. The first thing I tried to do was create factory restore disks so that when the new hard drive gets here I can remove the old hard drive and replace it with the new one and put the pre-installed windows 8 that came with the laptop on it. I can't however find a way to create factory restore disks. Is this still possible and if not what are my options for replacing a hard drive for this laptop and using the same windows install that originally came with it? I would prefer to not have to clone the hard drive because the new hard drive is an SSD so I will want to install windows with AHCI mode on.
Ultimately, I want to do a clean install of windows 8 on the new laptop using the existing pre-installed windows 8 key. I imagine this would be pretty simple if I had windows 8 install discs but I don't have those either as they didn't come with the laptop. what my options are to make this work?
So i had bought a laptop with Windows 8 Pre-installed.
HP Envy 6 1106TX, It doesn't have any CD/DVD Rom or anything. I'm using an external DVDRW
I made my recovery disks and want to do a clean install of Windows 7 on it.
To do this:
I disabled Secure Boot & Legacy something.
Then Set the Boot option to my Optical drive. Finally! the setup started, But as soon as i click on INSTALL NOW At first screen. It doesn't pick up my Optical Drive and says I've to Insert the disk, or choose my USB/CD Drive from the list (which is empty as it doesn't detects it)
2nd thing:I tried installing a clean version of Windows 8. If i enable Secure boot & Legacy. The Optical drive doesn't show up in Boot options to select it as boot. But when i disable it, It detects the drive and the same after the INSTALL NOW screen on windows 8. It says there's no harddrive/optical drive both.
