System Restore disks not working

[ricercar]

So I picked up a nice used HP Pavillion A430N nForce2 box for $200. After ordering the A430N system restore disks from HP, I discover that the disks won't restore the machine, claiming not to be appropriate for this computer. Yet the restore disk part number is appropriate for the Pavillion model I have.

Anyone know how HP restore disks are keyed to a HP model number? Is a slower CPU than stock responsible for lack-of-recognition? RAM capcity? The BIOS is definitely HP, and the motherboard is an HP OEM version of the ASUS A7N8X-VM400.

I'm out a whole $12+ 10 shipping, so it's not a critical failure. I just want to know.

[TierMann]

I've restored using just an hp mobo from an old pavillion before with the original cd's. CPU, RAM and HD were new. The optical drive was still original though so who knows.

This is the exact situation I was talking about in another thread. The reason why the restore partition they use is a bad idea. Speaking of... Have you tried hitting F10 on the boot screen to see if the restore is still hiding on the disk?

[j0j081]

My old HP computer didn't come with restore disks but it let you create them from Windows so you could delete the recovery partition so perhaps they are tied to model number or something.

[ricercar]

Unfortunately, the hard disk has no restore partition. If it was once there, my Red Hat test installation blew it away days ago.

The HP support representative asked me if I changed the motherboard or the hard drive, so my guess is that the current 40g HD is too small for the restore image, since the Pavilion a430n originally shipped with a 160g drive. This weekend I'll try a 160g or 200g drive and see if that allows the restore CDs to work.