Recovery Partition

   Just the other day, I was working on a model similar to my wife's notebook. The user took it to Best Buy who told him that the recovery partition was damaged and that he would need to purchase a recovery disk for $60.
   He brought  it to me, and to double check BB's work, I attempted to recover the OS from the recovery partition. I found that it was in fact damaged, so I copied a folder named "SWsetup" from the C drive (it contains all of the drivers and software that came with the computer from the factory) and tried to copy the users profile, but BB erased it when attempting to re-image the OS. I burnt my copy of Vista 64 and re-imaged his system, copied over SWsetup and installed only the necessary software to get everything to work. I also left him the copy of Vista that I burnt, in the event that he would need to re-image his system in the future.

Make: HP
Model: Pavillion DV7
P/N: Unavailable
O/S: Windows Vista (64-bit)

Graphics Controller Not Functional

    Today, I looked at my wife's laptop because it wouldn't boot. In fact it wouldn't do anything. All it would do is flash the keyboard lights four times and then repeat. So I looked on HP's website and found that the cause was: "Graphics controller not functional"
    I did some more searching online and found a forum where a user said that he switched the slots that the RAM was in and it booted for him. I gave it a shot and swapped the RAM around and then pulled the CMOS and main batteries. I held the power button for about 15 seconds, and while holding, plugged the power cable in. Amazingly, it booted for me.
    Finally my wife can have he computer back without me having to give myself a stroke by calling HP.
Edit: I also found out that secure sites and updates could not be accessed after fixing her computer. It turns out that I needed to adjust the date, since the date was off by 10 years. That fixed the problem.

Make: HP
Model: Pavillion DV7-1129wm
P/N: FS133UA
O/S: Windows Vista (64-bit)