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.

So pleased to have found the cure to my PCs sound problem

OK. So I've had a problem with poor sound quality on my PC for a couple of weeks now and had been searching for the cure without success. Until today, that is.

The problem - the audio had a kind of stuttering quality to it - was associated with any audio playback happening but just affecting the audio stream coming through my Chrome browser. Youtube and BBC iPlayer were both affected and, I'm guessing, all other similar sources had I been bothered to test further. I also knew the problem was restricted to Chrome because I'd watched the same videos through Internet Explorer and discovered that the audio played back via IE was just fine.

I'd found through my searching that there appeared to be many others affected by problems with the Adobe Flash plugin and so had already tried several suggested solutions including going into the Flash Player Settings Manager (accessed via the Control Panel) and deleting the browser data and settings. Next I uninstalled Flash via Add/Remove programs. I then updated to the latest release (11.5.502.110) but still no solution found.

I then discovered that Chrome has another separate set of plugins which are accessed by entering the following address from within Chrome itself: chrome://plugins/  Navigating to that page will bring up a list of all currently installed plugins with one or more Flash Player plugins among those listed. I found that my browser had a couple of different versions of Flash plugin including the latest (as above) so I simply disabled the older (11.5.31.2) Flash plugin.

It was that final step of disabling the older Flash plugin that delivered the needed break Hurrah!

Be aware, also, that if you disable the only installed Flash plugin you'll be prompted to install a Flash plugin the next time you access media which depends on the plugin. Should be no biggy, though :)

I sincerely hope this solution helps someone else out there struggling with this same problem.