Friday 18 January 2013

A few words on recovery media

Most, if not all, new PCs that come with a pre-installed Windows OS normally provide a facility to create what is known as recovery media. Recovery media is normally a set of DVDs or perhaps a flash drive containing a default installation of the Windows OS and optionally any apps that came pre-installed on the system. The recovery media is very useful if the PC is affected by a hard drive failure or severe virus or malware infection and there's no other form of disc image backup from which to restore. Recovery media is also useful for quickly wiping all personal data from a PC if it's to be given or sold to a new owner. It could also be used to reinstate a known good working OS if the system becomes unusable for some other reason.So if you've not already got a set of recovery media for your PC do go ahead and create a set as soon as possible because other methods of recovery are likely to be time-consuming and/or more expensive.


Instructions for how to create the recovery media are typically provided and, based on my experience, there's a wizard-driven process for the creation of a set of recovery media. This page on the HP site describes the creation process using either DVDs or a flash drive.


If you've acquired a system from a previous owner and the recovery media isn't included you may find that you're blocked from creating the recovery media because a set has already previously been created. A restriction is in place - certainly on HP PCs - which limits the number of times recovery media can be created to just one. If you're in that situation and need to overcome the block then completing the following steps will work...


1. Delete the hidden file named RMCStatus.bin from the following two places:


  • c:\Program Files(x86)\Hewlett-Packard\Recovery Manager\
  • - the root of a drive d:\ (or whatever drive letter is assigned to the RECOVERY partition)

2. Remove the hidden file Rebecca.dat from C:\Windows\System32\

Note. I've tested the above on a Windows 7 HP laptop and it worked just fine.

I also understand that it's possible  use a product like Partition Magic which has, amongst its other capabilities, a recovery media creation tool which could be your get-out-of-jail card in the absence of all other options.

And finally please bear in mind that the above guide must be used in conjunction with - not in place of - whatever process you already have in place for backup of your data.

No comments:

Post a Comment