My wife’s HP Pavilion Core i5 (running Windows 7) wouldn’t boot up this morning, and she forced it to turn off before leaving for work. This evening, when she turned it on, it went directly to the HP Recovery Manager, which unfortunately is giving her a few options, and damned if we know which road to go down.
The banner across the top reads:
Welcome to Recovery Manager, HP’s tool that lets you quickly get your operating system back up and running if it ever becomes corrupted.
Under that, there are two columns.
The one on the left is headed, “I need help immediately,” and it gives three choices:
- Microsoft System Restore
- Microsoft Startup Repair Tool
- System Recovery
The one on the right is headed, “I’d like to take precautions” and has only one choice, “File Backup Program.”
So that’s four choices, and we don’t know which one we should try first, or whether order matters, as we combinatorists say. Any suggestions?
You always want to try from least to most drastic measure, and in this case, the most drastic measure is #3: System recovery will wipe everything clean and will start you off as if you’ve bought a new computer. You should select this only as a last option, (if you don’t want to start “new”). System restore (#1) will essentially “turn back the clock” and you might be able to restore your computer to a previous state when it was working fine. Startup repair tool (#2) is exactly that and might be able to repair files so Windows will start up again.
The file backup program is an option to allow you to save your data to an external drive if you haven’t already. If you keep regular backups you won’t need this, but if you haven’t, and you have important data you want to save, you should do this ASAP.
IMO, you should try in order from #3 to #1.
Huh? You identified option 3 as the most drastic, and recommend starting with that one? It seems the order from least drastic to most is 2, 1, 3.
I do agree with using the backup option first.
My mistake. Try from #1 to #3. I won’t debate which of #1 or #2 is less severe, but I would go with restore first since system files may have been corrupted. If the op went with #2 first, Windows may boot up fine, but they would still be stuck with corrupt files if any existed.
2, 1, 3
If it will roll into windows there are then other options to repair any residual damage like System file checker or third party utilities like reimage
Unless you’ve done a recent backup of your important files, the first thing that I’d do would be to remove the hard drive; install it into a USB external hard drive enclosure; then back everything up to another computer.
Next do one of the recoveries above. The 2,1,3 suggested seems to be the best course of action. Just remember by time you get to #3, all your files are gone unless you back them up first.