HP Compaq Recovery Manager F11

Posted On : February 26th, 2008 by vinhboy

31 Comments »

The arrival of the “recovery manager” on new computers is heaven sent. Very often it becomes an extremely good idea to just wipe everything and start brand new (geesh, don’t you we wish we all had “recovery manager” for other aspects of life). But the problem is, many companies are still not embracing or implementing the technology properly. It can often be a pain in the arse to figure out when, where, and what to press in order to load the “recovery manger”.

I spent a good three hours today trying to figure out why the hell the F11 – Recovery Manager button on my Compaq does not work.

All the instructions on HP sites said it should load the “Recovery Manager” when you press it, but for mine it did not.

Finally I found instructions here.

Instructions are as follows:


I know how to activate if F11 does not help to start recovery.
If U can access to START > Control Panel > Administrative tools or shorter way:
START > run > compmgmt.msc and press enter
then Disk management
Find which is recovery partition
Make Mark partition as Active
Then restart pc.

Thanks to mindas22.

These instructions are a workaround. You are basically running the hidden recovery partition as a main drive. What the hell happened to the F11 function?? I don’t know.

31 Comments

  1. Fib1123 Says (September 1st, 2008):

    Thanks for posting this! Solved a seemingly never-ending battle!

  2. John Says (December 7th, 2008):

    Thanks Vinh!
    It helps me, great work!

  3. sarain escobedo villanueva Says (January 29th, 2009):

    no me funciona internet explorer ¿será por no instalar recovery manager o que relación existe?

  4. Ludley Says (March 28th, 2009):

    HOLY SHITTTTT!!!!!
    You saved meeeee!!!!
    Thank you man!

  5. ZatW17 Says (May 25th, 2009):

    Thanks helped a lot!!!!!!!!!!!!!

  6. hlvhung Says (May 29th, 2009):

    Hi all, I do same above but when restart, my PC shows message “NTLDR missing Press Ctrl+Alot+Del to restart”. I don’t know how to recovery it
    Please help me
    Thanks a lot

  7. vinhboy Says (May 29th, 2009):

    @hlvhung – sounds like you picked the wrong partition to boot from. That’s bad news… Here is the cure from microsoft: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/228004

  8. Ritchi3 Says (June 3rd, 2009):

    You sir, are awesome.

  9. Shai Perednik Says (August 17th, 2009):

    Thank you so much for posting this! I would have spent hours getting this to work. For those that can’t get into windows directory just search for “ubuntu mark partition as active”. Its a bitty trickier in linux but it’ll work too. Or you could do it in dos too.

  10. wanb Says (September 17th, 2009):

    Men! u r a genius, encountered same problm, tried it and it worked like magic, thanks sooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo much. Keep up the gud work gee, nuf respect…….

  11. IntelliQ Says (September 25th, 2009):

    I tried to downgrade from vista to xp thinking i might get better performance out of my games on my laptop, but what a nightmare it is getting drivers to work in XP.
    In the end I gave up and tried to run the F11 recovery and to my dismay and shock nothing happens.

    The tip here worked like a charm from the RUN menu in XP.

    Vista is now reintalling to it’s orginal factory settings as I write this.

    Thanks for sharing the solution.

  12. Kais Says (October 25th, 2009):

    thaks a lot for this tip :D
    you saved my day :D

  13. Juan Duque Says (December 15th, 2009):

    Thanks, you saved my day

  14. Pavan Khatri Says (December 25th, 2009):

    Actually i make partition myself so now not showing recovery partition then now what to do…so i will get recovery partition again…?

  15. Manoj M K, KSEB Kerala Says (January 15th, 2010):

    Thank You, Very Much
    Exact solution
    Not in FAQ of HP Site

  16. zeki Says (March 5th, 2010):

    Thank you. That was really helpfull.

  17. Me Says (March 6th, 2010):

    I just wasted an hour trying everything to get Recovery Manager to come up…..then I read this page, tried it, and bingo….you saved me at least a few hours…..Thanks for posting this

  18. David Barnes Says (March 8th, 2010):

    What a total relief!! Worked like a champ!

  19. Troy Black Says (March 25th, 2010):

    Thanks Man !

  20. apple11 Says (April 18th, 2010):

    thanks man saved my friends laptop

  21. Guss Says (May 8th, 2010):

    I tried this but my Mark partition as Active is grey i cant access it can anyone help ???

  22. Ali Says (May 24th, 2010):

    thanks a lot man… F11 key wasnt working for me (compaq fail most likely) but this worked!

  23. Dave Says (June 3rd, 2010):

    I have crawled through a mountain of pages reading how I have to order disks and this, that and the next thing.
    You have cracked it in 8 lines and it’s working now….

    You Sir, are a God amoungst men!

    Thank you.

  24. Juha Says (June 14th, 2010):

    Kiitos – Thank you! This thread saved my day and the F11 key. :=)

  25. Ruzie Says (June 29th, 2010):

    I was so excited when I come across your blog. I don’t know how to mark partition active & checked this link: http://www.microsoft.com/resources/documentation/windows/xp/all/proddocs/en-us/dm_active_partition.mspx?mfr=true
    But when I right-clicked, there is no ‘Mark partition as active’…. huhuhu….

    Do you think I should follow use the Command Prompt? That looks scary as I don’t know much actually…:-(

    Appreciate your help very much!

  26. Partition Recovery Says (July 1st, 2010):

    Sometimes back, i also faced the same problem then my friend suggest me third party tool Stellar Windows data recovery…..its very easy to use

  27. Abdul Says (July 2nd, 2010):

    Thank you soooooooooo much for this.
    REally helped after at least 2 solid hours of searching the web for a solution!!

    Wohoooooooo!

  28. Ruzie Says (July 2nd, 2010):

    Appreciate the info by Partition Recovery. However, in my case here all my data are not lost as I have them in my Seagate external hard drive. My main problem now is to reformat my HP Compaq F700 laptop. The F11 doesn’t work and now I can’t even ‘Mark partition as active’…. Please help.

  29. Honoré Says (July 13th, 2010):

    Thanks Vinh!
    It helps me, great work!

  30. Alex Says (July 15th, 2010):

    Hey, I have Set the Recovery drive partiton to Active and then i restarted my PC but then what do you press, beacause it justs boots to windows 7 again?

  31. Uri Says (July 30th, 2010):

    DDDUUUUDDDEEE !

    You’re Good!

    what a tip!
    it worked like magic.
    Thanks
    Uri

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