OEM Recovery Partition HP Laptop

I own an HP 14 AC 016ne. This laptop was shipped with Windows 8.1 originally. I had upgraded the Windows to Windows 10 pro with my own licence key that I had purchased separately. I had also resized my hard drive but I never changed or touched any other partitions on it.

Now, I am planning to sell it and I want to restore it to its factory state with the windows 8.1. However, I am unable to do so. The OEM Recovery partition is intact in the GPT partition system. It's of 20 G.B. I have searched alot and all I am getting is the option to mark the drive as active which is not possible in GPT partition scheme as far as I understand. I have tried to boot into HP recovery manager using F11 key at startup but the only two options greyed out in the recovery manager relate to restoring of factory image.

Please help me out as I have tried everything and I am not able to find a way to restore the factory state.

Thanks in advance.

Hold down shift key and click on restart from the power menu to enter the recovery environment. Somewhere in those menus should be the option to reset Windows. That might restore the factory Windows 8.

Otherwise , boot the computer from the recovery drive you created when the computer was still loaded with the factory Windows 8.

NavyLCDR said:

Hold down shift key and click on restart from the power menu to enter the recovery environment. Somewhere in those menus should be the option to reset Windows. That might restore the factory Windows 8.

Otherwise , boot the computer from the recovery drive you created when the computer was still loaded with the factory Windows 8.

I didn't create any recovery drive. It is just in my system right now in the windows 10 as a OEM Recovery Partition. It contains all the data.

The recovery environment has disabled the option to factory reset for some odd reason which I am assuming is due to the fact that I resized my C drive when I installed Windows 10 on it.

As for the reset option, I did try it but it only reset it to Windows 10.
What I want to do is to use this OEM recovery partition and restore it to factory state.

I didn't create any recovery drive. It is just in my system right now in the windows 10 as a OEM Recovery Partition. It contains all the data.

On an HP laptop, which I have too, you can create a recovery drive one time, in lieu of factory restore discs. So, if you've never done it (it won't let you continue, if you have and forgot), try to do it now. In search, type 'Create a recovery drive'. Check 'backup system files' box, Next and follow prompts. If your orig Recovery Drive (usually D) has been untouched, you may be able to boot from the usb and do a factory restore from that.

mrgeek said:

I didn't create any recovery drive. It is just in my system right now in the windows 10 as a OEM Recovery Partition. It contains all the data.

On an HP laptop, which I have too, you can create a recovery drive one time. So, if you've never done it, try to do it now. In search, type 'Create a recovery drive'. Check backup system files, Next and follow prompts. If your orig Recovery Drive (usually D) has been untouched, you may be able to boot from the usb and do a factory restore from that.

Thank you for your reply here.

The thing is as I have read on internet and hp's website as well, we cannot create a recovery drive with windows 10 as Microsoft has some reservations of its own and it follows its own method. So I am assuming if I try this, I will only be able to create a recovery drive with Windows 10's own recovery partition and not the factory image.

Sorry, but Upgrading your HP to Win10 is known to corrupt the HP recovery information such that no reset will work, anymore.

To reset it now, you will need to contact the HP Support Forums to find out how to order HP Recovery Media.

I am so thankful to you guys. Been in IT since 2000 and only at an age of 25, I have consulted many forums for help but I haven't found such a helpful community receiving such quick replies. :)

If the idea is to preserve your purchased Win10 key for use on your next device and to prep the current for sale or gifting, then download a Win 8.1 iso and just clean install or update the OS with it. Have your key on hand, if needed but should be able to skip this step..