Windows 10: Using ISO to re-install/recover W10 instead of HP recovery app

I hope I can explain this properly...

I just bought an HP Envy laptop with Windows 10 preinstalled. There is a recovery partition, but I'd like to erase the data in this partition and use it for personal files. My question is: if I do ever need to re-install or recover Windows 10 on this laptop, can I do it with a DVD I burned using the media creation tool from Microsoft instead of the specific HP recovery app the laptop shipped with?

Thanks for any info...

:)

 

Is Windows RE used in Windows 10?

If I perform a clean install using a Win 10 ISO DVD on the SSD, will the install place a Recovery Partition on that drive? I would then re-run the migration software from the old HDD to recover files and apps. Currently I was able to get Windows RE on
the new SSD to find the recovery software in the Recovery Partition located on the old HDD.

 

replace recovery partition on upgraded desktop

My HP desktop came originally with W7, which I upgraded to W8.1, then W10. My understanding is that the recovery partition on that computer (on D is still at the W7 level. How do I replace that, so I can recover to W10 if I have a problem? And can I
recover to the then-current level of W10 (including apps, settings, and files), or will I go back to a basic W10 level?

 

Recovery partitions that come on a pre-loaded box will contain the factory image as set by HP, in your case. That would include any pre-bundled bloatware and such. If you want a clean, fresh start without the crap, save the contents of that recovery partition on an external drive, and during clean install from your MCT DVD, delete the partition and extend the OS partition. MS Win 10 will create it's own recovery partition.

 

Deleting all partitions on the hard drive and installing to the resulting unallocated space will give a completely 100% vanilla Windows install with none of the factory stuff left over. A lot of the new computers have two or three parts of recovery software in different partitions.

 

That's even cleaner, I didn't want to over-confuse. If during installation, you blow away ALL partitions, you get as clean as clean can get!

 

Thanks for the info tomcat. Question: if I have the DVD, why would it need to create a new recovery partition? And could I opt out of creating it during re-installation? One of the main reasons I want to get rid of HP's partition is to recover the diskspace and use it for personal files.

Is there a particular reason I would need to save the HP recovery files?

 

Thanks Navy! That's what I kind of thought, but I wasn't sure if the motherboard or firmware or something has some kind of HP branding buried in it that would prevent me from using anything other than its own recovery files to reinstall Win10.

 

I would go with what NavyLCDR suggested above. However, before doing anything, I suggest to:

• Just in case things go wrong. First, create a backup image of your current Windows to an external HD using: Macrium Reflect Free . Also create a USB/DVD Macrium Rescue disk from the program so you can use to boot and restore from it.
• Download: Driver 4.1 Backup Download and run to backup all the drivers, save them to the external HD so once done with new Windows 10 installation, you can restore the drivers without having to re-download & re-install all the drivers. This will save time.

 

Typically a recovery partition is about 450 MB, not a huge amount of space. Not sure what yours looks like right now with the HP Recovery Partition. Can you do a screenshot of Disk Management and post it back. Also, when you have time, update your system specs here, the more info the easier to help.

Do you have any recovery media from HP? How are you doing your backups?

 

topgun, those sound like great apps, esp. the driver backer-upper. Thanks! I've done disk images before using the tool that comes with Windows (specifically Win7). Is there an advantage to using a third-party app?

 

The reason Macrium Reflect Free is mentioned is it is fast, reliable, and allows multiple backups as opposed to Win supplied backup & recovery, which overwrites the last backup. Very flexible, used by many here on the forum. And it's FREE!

 

Thanks again tomcat. What I thought was weird was the recovery partition was visible in explorer and assigned the "D:" letter. That annoyed me. I've never seen a PC that showed the recovery partition and assigned it such a low drive letter. I'm used to partitioning and grabbing "D" for my personal stuff.

There was no recovery media with the laptop. The Recovery partition D:\ says it's 13.1 GB, of which there is 1.59 GB free. Which I think is a little large.

 

In addition to this. Macrium creates a single image file and easy to perform selective restore of files/folders by mounting the image as a virtual drive. Image verification is also included with Macrium.

With Windows built in backup/restore. There's no option to verify whether the backup is any good. It creates multiple files/folders so if any of those are missing/corrupted then you are out of luck. In addition, once the backup is created on a HD, you cannot move them anywhere else due to security built in with Windows Backup/Restore and that's why some people are having problem to perform restore because Windows Backup/Restore cannot find it.

 

It's got the HP OS and all the bundled bloatware in it.........Win 10 is normally about 450MB, like I said earlier. Blow away all the partitions. Just let the clean install do it's thing.