This entry was originally posted on 30 Aug 2006 - a hack to reset the PC Recovery Disk Creator that came with HP notebooks to create another set of recovery disks. It was edited and re-posted on 10 Aug 2007 because the Gateway tool and Microsoft presentation mentioned were no longer available.
I have a HP Pavilion dv5201tx notebook with a hidden Recovery partition. If the OS partition needs to be re-installed, data in this partition is used. However, it won't help if the entire disk is corrupt, so HP recommends creating a set of Recovery DVDs.
And that comes to a whopping 3 DVDs or 12 CDs! And to make matters worse, the PC Recovery Disk Creator (by SoftThinks) only allows one backup set of DVDs/CDs to be created, at Microsoft's behest.
A search on Google revealed a method to "reset" the PC Recovery Disk Creator to allow multiple backup copies to be created. Search Google for ResetRmc. It used to be available from Gateway (ftp://ftp.gateway.com/pub/hardware_support/drivers/win_xp/misc/ResetRmc.exe), but no longer (the password used to be "G8way!" without quotes).
Just run the program and that's it! The program does not display any window or message after its done its work, so you'll just have to try to create another recovery set.
Download:
This is third party software, and could be harmful to your computer! Use at your own risk! I disclaim any responsibility for anything that may (or may not) happen.