USB recovery drive - help!!!

Denis, thank you so much for your help so far. I tried both the USB sticks in my Dell Inspiron laptop and they both booted up fine with navigation ok with mouse and keyboard. This means the USB sticks themselves are fine and that the problem is definitely with my PC. I get to the first blue screen and everything is dead - the mouse doesn't work and the keyboard shows no sign of life - things like num. lock etc lights do NOT come on, almost as though there is no power to keyboard. I have tried the following:-

1. In device manager I checked every USB for driver updates and all said I already had the latest drivers.

2. I downloaded an HP USB 3.0 driver update as per suggestion in post#10. That has made no difference. I think my installed drivers are USB 2.0

3. I have tried to find a driver download for an HP USB 2.0 but I cannot find one. The HP site doesn't offer anything. Other sites I have found that offer one get a "Blocked" message from Malwarebytes about possible PUP's and Trojans so I have not installed those (yet). Do you know how/where I can get a updated USB 2.0 driver for an Intel Q6600 processor for Windows 10??

4. I tried my own installed driver update program (DriverHub) which came up with two USB drivers it said needed update but when I clicked to install them I got an "installation error" message.

So, any ideas how to get round this hopefully final problem??

Find a camera or smartphone camera to take pictures and post images into this thread.

For any problems posting images please use share links: one drive, drop box, or google drive


On a working computer insert a bootable USB flash drive that has some free space.


Download and install onto the flash drive HP Diagnostics UEFI version 8.3.0.0:
https://www.hp.com/us-en/campaigns/h.../pc-diags.html


Move the flash drive to the problematic HP computer.

Power on the problematic computer and repetitively click F9.

Boot to the flash drive with the HP hardware diagnostics.


Run extensive loop until error tests overnight.

The next day if it has made two or more loops click esc and run the component tests.

Post images into this thread.

For any problem posting images please use share links: one drive, drop box, or google drive

My keyboard is a wired USB, my mouse is a wired USB, and I have tried with a cordless mouse as well. All don't work. The interesting thing which may be a clue, is that my wired USB keyboard shows no response when I get into the blue screen. No lights, nothing!!

I don't have any problems when I insert any other USB 2.0 USB stick so I don't think there could be a problem there.... If I put different USB sticks into same USB slot as where I inserted Recovery USB they work fine. Also, I should think that ALL my USB ports are 2.0 given that the PC is about 8 or 9 years old.

So, I'm running out of options.

cereberus said:

Frankly,usb recovery drives are pretty limited, and you can just use a usb installation drive to do same thing. Better option really is to make a full image backup using tool like Macrium Reflect Free which backs up programs as well.

In addition, after you make the standard Windows 10 installation USB flash drive, create a folder on it and export the drivers to the folder:
Backup and Restore Device Drivers in Windows 10

Then you are sure to have everything you would need.

Re post #14 I created a bootable USB drive using Command Prompt/Diskpart method. I downloaded the recommended HP diagnostics tool onto the clean USB drive (done as a FAT32 ),then extracted all the files in HP download onto the USB stick (they downloaded as a TAR file !), restarted computer pressing F9, chose USB stick, then........it booted in the Normal way up to my current desktop. What have I done wrong??

I'm beginning to think that trying this Macrium Free as Cereberus noted in post #17 might prove better results. As I have said, I don't think the problem is in the Recovery drive I created in Windows, it's just that something in my PC is not allowing me to navigate using mouse nor keyboard and I don't know what else there is to check. I'm about ready to give up !!

Make sure legacy support is enabled in your USB settings in BIOS.