Hey all,
Just a quick note on the HP recovery partitions: I also have a DV9000 series (see my sig), and needed to invoke the recovery feature. Unfortunately, it wouldn't work with F11 despite numerous OFFICIAL documents and sources saying it would!
The trick I found is this: The recovery partition may not be marked "Active" (you can check this in the Disk Management feature in Computer Management in the Administrative Tools section of Control Panel, or just open your start menu and type "Disk Management" in the search line). If you need to use the partition, be sure to set it Active (right click in the partition in the drive map area and click "Mark partition as Active" or however it is worded). Once that's done, you SHOULD be able to click F11 during boot and recovery should run.
Problems with this method: If your main Windows installation on the drive is non-functioning, obviously you cannot do this with the computer running. You COULD place the drive in ANOTHER computer and perform the steps potentially. Also, if your recovery partition is, in fact, corrupted (or you deleted necessary files off of it), this method obviously won't help.
One would assume that the partition would be "Active" if you are running the factory installed OS installation (be it Vista, XP, Win7, whatever). However, I BELIEVE installing a new version after-market will remove the "Active" flag from the partition (I had installed Windows 7 on the system, wipe-upgrading from Vista but leaving the recovery partition in place).
Just my two cents. Take them for what they're worth!
Regards,
O Shadow Fox O
