Making Multiple Recovery Disks using the HP PC Recovery CD-DVD Creator program

This relies on information on the recovery partition. On some machines, it's called HP_RECOVERY, and is situated on drive D:\

Some information I have suggests that certain models of Compaqs could also use a similar or identical system.

The folder structure on the recovery partition I have info on is as follows:
d:\cmdcon
d:\hp
d:\I386
d:\MiniNT
d:\PRELOAD
d:\RECOVERY
d:\Recycled
d:\System Volume Information
d:\Tools

The above is for information purposes, as well as a method of finding this page through a search engine.

This will allow you to either fix a bad attempt at making disks, or make more sets of recovery disks, which is something that really should've been made available anyways.

I collected this info from elsewhere, but had one hell of a time finding search terms that led to the 2 solitary message board topics with the info I found. So, it can be here too.

Note that older .CAB based hewlett packard restore CDs use the password 'pandora' to unzip stuff from 'a.cab', 'b.cab', etc., and there are no doubt other ways of doing stuff with other older/newer HP models.

With that fleshed out a bit, here are the actual bits of info you'll need to work around the protection present in this recovery CD utility.

Making Another Set of Recovery CDs using the HP PC Recovery CD-DVD Creator program:
http://whirlpool.net.au/forum-replies-archive.cfm/683359.html

Rename these files to include an _ after the name(you'll need to have hidden files and operating system files visible to access them)
1) [Main Partition] \ [Windows Directory] \ SMINST \

Rename HPCD.SYS to HPCD.SYS_
if HPCD.SYS_ already existed, rename or delete it

2) [Recovery Partition] \ HPCD.SYS
Rename HPCD.SYS to HPCD.SYS_
if HPCD.SYS_ already existed, rename or delete it

Note that these files will likely be about 22 bytes, and will contain the text "d : \ H P C D . S Y S ", with squares(null bytes) where the spaces are

In the locations specified above, try renaming these files or moving them off the drive temporarily:
"HPCD.SYS"
"hpboot.sys"
"RCBoot.sys"
"DRECOVERY"
"DVD"

My own experience with this includes files in these locations for a hewlett packard hp pavilion a1020n
c:\windows\sminst\hpcd.sys (22 bytes, 9/11/2005 4:03 PM)
c:\windows\sminst\DVD (may not have to be deleted, but probably should be if it's there)
d:\preload\DVD (I was able to write CDs with this still in place)
d:\preload\split.log (This was on a Compaq Presario SL104?F)
d:\HPCD.sys (22 bytes, 9/11/2005 5:03 PM)
d:\RCBoot.sys (26 bytes, 7/15/2005 5:14 AM)

(note that you could have the files c:\windows\sminst\CD and d:\preload\CD instead of DVD if you chose to write CDs instead)br>
After this, the program should happily run in it's ordinarily dysfunctional form.

Note that during the write/verify processes, the disk writer may spin down, and do nothing for a long time, then spin up and begin writing like nothing happened. This shouldn't be a problem.

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Additionally, for those who desperately wish to screw around with the contents of the recovery drive in the comfort of windows explorer...
In each folder on the D:\ drive, including the root, remove the system and hidden attributes on the desktop.ini folder, and rename the desktop.ini file to desktop.ini.orig. I took the time to re-enable the attributes on the renamed file just for consistency.
This will make it so the folders are no longer protected under windows explorer, and will allow you to browse it like any other drive's contents.

renaming the autorun.inf file to _autorun._inf should make the drive stop bringing up the protected dialog box when you try to access it once you reboot the computer.