A guide to booting HP Elitepad to recovery environment using USB flash drive
Hi, Back in October 2013, a support case that I opened with Symantec in relation to failure of the Elitepad 900 G1 to boot into the Symantec recovery environment from a USB or DVD drive etc, was ultimately closed with no resolution due to a compatibility issue or similar. I recently decided to pick this up again and am pleased to report a successful outcome but not without issues. Here's what I did: > Note: I have SP2 installed on my SSR client (Ver. 11.0.2.49853)but this is immaterial to process described below. > Grabbed a copy of the latest 32bit recovery ISO (SSR11.0.2.49853_AllWin_English_SrdOnly.iso)from here:https://www4.symantec.com/Vrt/offer?a_id=88724 > Obtained and formatted thumb drive as FAT32 (I did not have to bother with the diskpart procedure that is referenced as required from several sources) > Used WinZip to extract the contents of the ISO to the USB flash drive. Note: DO NOT use the Customer Recovery Disk wizard in the SSR 2013 client. > That's it, plugged it in to one of 2 x USB sockets available on the Elitepad productivity jacket. (Note: if you don't have a jacket you might be in trouble having access to only 1 x USB port. > A USB keyboard needs to be connected to the 2nd USB port as there is no touch panel functionality in the recovery environment. Note that If you wish to use a USB Ext Drive to store the recovery points, the USB Boot Flash drive can be safely removed once the environment is entered, allowing you to connect your USB Ext Drive. > In Elitepad Advanced Startup options, selected USB EFI Boot Device option. > Elitepad booted into recovery environment with navigation by keyboard thereafter (Some useful keyboard shortcuts are:- TAB to cycle the focus between objects; enter to select; [space] to check/uncheck a checkbox; right arrow key to expand a file folder to show subfolder) > Ripped a Windows 8.1 image from one Elitepad and then restored using this image to a factory state Windows 8.0 device with no issues whatsoever, just had to re-activate Windows after the restore. So anyway, the critical step in the process described above is to use WinZip or a similar archiving utility to get the ISO contents onto the flash drive because for some bizarre reason, if you use the Symantec Custom Recovery Disk wizard to burn the ISO, this causes all of the files on the flash drive to become hidden (even with "Show Hidden Files / Folders" checked in file explorer?) with the exception of autorun.inf. The problem appears to be that the Elitepad 900 GI apparently can't see these files because it does not recognise a flash drive prepared in this manner, as a valid EFI USB boot device. It seems unlikely that the Elitepad 900 is the only tablet that might be affected by this issue. Hopefully this guide might save somebody some time at some stage. Orson.
