I have a recovery partition but how can i boot it? there is no option on startup!?

Question

i am using a friends computer to post this question.. I bought a HP Laptop - Compaq nx6325 pre-installed with Windows XP..it is Vista capable so i installed Vista Ultimate 32bit. i partioned my drives to the following Vista(C), Documents(D) and i left my HP XP Recovery Partion which is (E)..i haven't taken favour of Vista so i want to reinstall XP..the recovery partition has everything but i don't know how to boot it at start up and then format Vista and install the XP over it..Does anyone know how to boot my recovery partition. Also i have no recovery CD's i was told it is all on my Harddrive which i believe is the recovery Partion. i would much appreciate help ASAP. ThankYou

I understand the comments so far but have tried F11 and other F** but nothing. i shouldn't have no driver problems because they will be in the recovery partition. is there any way i can boot that recovery partition manually or not burn it as a bootable. surely i can do something with it as it is just sitting.

Answer 1

Restart your computer and right after restart press F11 to access the recovery partition (assuming that it's still there).

Answer 2

This may not work but a friend recently had a similar problem,he solved it by starting the hp recovery manger program from inside Windows,is it still in your programs folder of Vista,if so try starting it up as a normal program then run the wizard which will give you an option of what to restore then go from there.
Also I think that the recovery partition for XP would have been hidden so the vista installation should not have affected it so you could just go into Vista system restore,use the destructive recovery option then reinstall XP (after backing up your files of course)
hope this helps.

Answer 3

I would dump windows man, you're banging your head against a wall here. It's possible to create a restore cd from the recovery partition because that's actually an image of the original system from the factory. I have friends that work at Dell in tech support and they are having a very difficult time with Vista and their customers. That's why they started shipping a few systems with Ubuntu Linux installed, it's less painful explaining to a customer the finer points of Linux than it is trying to figure out how to make vista work.

Visit this website and read a little about Ubuntu, I think you'll agree that it can serve all of your computing needs and then some.

http://www.ubuntu.com/

Should you decide to download Ubuntu, it is a live cd version meaning that you can boot form the cd and give it a test drive, without installing it to your system making any changes. Once you've taken a look at it however I feel confident that you'll make the switch. It comes complete with everything you need to be productive. In addition, it can run any game out there, even games/applications not designed to run on linux.

Here's a great tutorial for installing Ubuntu 7.04 Feisty fawn:
http://www.howtoforge.com/the_perfect_desktop_ubuntu7.04

Answer 4

The Vista Recovery disks may be ON the hard drive, so Read The Friendly Manual FIRST.


Then, you must buy the XP Recovery disks from HP, to avoid driver problems, not a store-bought XP.

TIP: Back up your data, Recovery destroys everything.

Answer 5

Try pressing F11 at the start up of your computer.
If it didn't work then try pressing F6 at start up.