How to restore the OEM partition after installing Windows 8?

Question

I installed Windows 8 onto my Lenovo S-10 netbook. I now want to go back to Windows XP so I can give the netbook away.

Previously after installing other OSes such as Windows 7 on the device I have been able to go back to Windows XP by pressing the "Restore" hardware key. Now whenever I press this key it just boots up into Windows 8. I can see that the OEM recovery partition is still there. I have tried installing the Lenovo recovery software so that I can restore from inside Windows, but this will not install on Windows 8.

How can I restore Windows XP using the OEM partition?

Answer 1

Using this guide I was able to restore the netbook to its original state. Apparently this procedure is a bit risky, so do so at your own risk. Open a command window cmd (possibly as an administrator) and then do the following:

diskpart
DISKPART> select disk 0
DISKPART> list partition

Look for the OEM partition, for me it was Partition 2 OEM and then use its index for the next command:

DISKPART> select partition 2
DISKPART> active

Reboot.

The Lenovo recovery software should now load. Follow the instructions to restore your Windows XP installation.

After restoring, the OEM partition will still be set as the boot partition, so every time you turn your netbook on it will boot into recovery. I could not get a safe mode command prompt to load without errors, so I created a GParted Live USB and booted into that. Once in GParted select your main Windows XP partition and turn the boot flag on (Partition → Manage Flags). Shutdown GParted, remove the USB drive and you can now boot into Windows XP and apply about 3 years of Windows updates.

Answer 2

Make the OEM recovery partition the active (boot) partition, then reboot the computer.

There are several ways to do this.

Answer 3

I had almost the same problem and I've solved. See my case bellow.

My case: I was using Windows 8 that came with my Dell notebook. I went to the disk manager and shrunk the disk into 2 units: (the main unit and the download unit). Last week I did a factory reset on my notebook and when the Windows startet after the reset, I couldn't see the second unid (downloads unit). I'd tried to download Acronis software, but it doesn't work with Windows 8. I tried to manage disk with the Admistrative Tool, and manage disks, but I couldn't apply any of the functions.

How I solved: Following the instructions above, I found another way to solve the problem.

1. Run CMD from the search tool.
2. type: diskpart
3. type: list disk --> You are going to see the list of disks you have.
4. type: select disk X (X = number of the disk you want)
5. type: list volume --> You are going to see the list of volume you have.
6. type: select volume X (X = number of the volume you want to be selected)
7. type: assign (it is going to attribute a letter to this volume. If you want to attribute a specific letter, type assign letter=X)

This was the only way that worked with me. This may help another user with the same problem as mine.