HP Elitepad 900 – How to restore windows 8 when startup repair and recovery fails

Windows 8 has some good features, especially backup and restore. One of the very first things you should do is to copy the recovery partition to a USB drive. This can be done through windows 8 just search for “create recovery” or “backup”.

For most issues holding the power button + volume down button will get you into the startup menu and recovery mode. However once in a while a unit gets its hard drive corrupted and will fail to recover/ fail to fix windows startup. In this case you will need to get into CMD prompt and format the hard drive before it lets you do a recovery from the USB you created earlier.

Please note only attempt the following if you already created a recovery USB.

1. Hold power + volume down button to boot into menu screen.
2. Select F11 recovery.
3. Select Troubleshoot.
4. Select Advanced.
5. Choose command prompt (CMD).
6. Once inside command prompt type DISKPART and press enter. now diskpart will launch. use it to format your hard drive: type list volume, then type select volume <x>, replace <x> with the OS volume number (usually volume 0) and then type clean to delete the volume. More info on how to do this at http://www.techhack.co.uk/2011/03/31/format-a-hard-drive-with-command-prompt/
7. once you have wiped your hard drive power off your elitepad. Plug in the recovery USB and power on the unit as step 1.
8. Select F11 recovery, then troubleshoot and then reset your PC. It will ask if you want to keep the original partition or re-partition the drive. I always choose to repartition the drive just like factory original.
9. Wait about 3 hours for the recovery and then unplug the recovery USB and your elitepad should work like new again.