Can't create win 10 repair disc

I tried to create a repair disc for an HP laptop but windows wants me to insert an installation disc. I don't have any. I upgraded it from win 8.1 to win 10 so I don't have an installation disc. How do I get over this requirement? My two Dell laptops created repair discs just fine. I installed win 10 on the Dell laptops fresh. They both had win 8 and I updated to win 10. Then I removed the HDD and inserted new SSD and installed win 10 fresh and they both got activated. I wonder what I need to do to get the HP laptop to create such a repair disc.

If I might add, and I agree with dalchina, I believe Windows 10 has a different name for this. I think in Win 7 they called it a System Repair disk.

It is called a "Recovery Drive" in 10. If you type Recovery drive into the Cortana search bar you should see at the top, "Create a recovery drive". You will need a USB Flash drive. If you start the process without installing a USB Flash drive it will tell how big of a drive you need. It takes a while on some machines, be patient. On average I see requests for 8GB keys, some are as small as 4GB and some are as big as 16GB.

This is not necessarily exactly like the HP media recovery creation but you can boot from it and invoke numerous processes including repair. It is not an Image and it is not a Data backup. Downside to this, with ISO or Windows 10 media creator you know it is one DVD or one 4GB key. It also does not have the functionality of disks like Kyhi's.

With V1511 at the very end of creation it will ask you if you want to delete the recovery partition. The answer is "No". In V1607 this option has been removed.

Thanks guys. To be more specific, I was using the backup and recovery (win 7) feature in my win 10 latest edition. It does allow a win 7 style repair disc and it has to be a DVD/CD, can't be flash drive. I was able to transfer win 10 from a smaller SSD to a larger one simply by backing up a system image, creating such repair disc, and booting with the repair disc with the new drive. I was able to then restore the system image to the new drive and restart. Then I could expand the partition to take the whole new SSD.

I was trying to do this same thing on that HP laptop, except this time I had to shrink the partition to fit on a smaller SSD. I was able to boot the HP using a repair disc I created on a different win 10 system and force select the HP's image. I didn't go through with it yet, due to some unrelated hard drive failure that I had to take care first. I'll report back with this win 7 method and try the recovery drive as well.

The Windows Recovery drive will allow you to restore the Image you created in Windows 10 Backup and Recovery (Windows 7). I know this as I posted this very question and ran a physical test. Numerous folks recommended Macruim Reflect. I had tried that but it didn't work. Seeing the recommendation I gave it another go and it worked flawlessly, so much so I've used several times. The first time I tried it there was likely a problem in the chair.

asusx205ta said:

Thanks guys. To be more specific, I was using the backup and recovery (win 7) feature in my win 10 latest edition. It does allow a win 7 style repair disc and it has to be a DVD/CD, can't be flash drive.

I have used Backup & Restore in Windows 10 to make a system image and the associated recovery CD. It is functionally identical to a Recovery Drive USB made with the 'include system files' option unticked.

Thanks for explaining Ken and Bree. Once I have more time, I'll go ahead to see how it works out. The HP has a dual boot win 10/linux. If system restore doesn't work, I'll have to do a clean win 10 install.

AddRAM,

Your win 10 understanding seems a bit outdated. Once you activate the win 10 license (in my case, free upgrade licenses), you can make a win 10 install flash drive and install it on a new hard drive, same laptop, or any laptop that has a valid 10 license. No install disc, just a win 10 install flash drive. You can download the tool to make such drive from microsoft. Regarding what my problem was, I was pretty clear in my OP.