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When I power on the laptop I'm greeted with a blue screen that reads, among other things:

The operating system couldn't be loaded because the HAL is missing or 
contains errors

Thankfully I can boot from a USB recovery drive, and have attempted several different fixes from those suggested in this post to rebuilding the BCD file from scratch as described here. All that changed were the startup errors, which varied from an issue with \Windows\System32\winloader.exe to exhibiting a completely black screen.

I would love to use something as simple as

bcdboot C:\Windows /s B: /f ALL

to fix things, but this fails with some error in comparing checksums.

I'm not sure, but I get the feeling that if someone posted the results of

bcdedit /enum

from a working BCD file with the same laptop (HP Stream 13), I could make my own match it and be set. I do not know though. Any suggestions aside from wiping the thing with a clean install? If it's any help, I also have a bootable Linux USB that could be used in the repair process. Many thanks for your suggestions!

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glinka
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1 Answers1

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As it turns out, one cannot remove the recovery partition from an HP Stream laptop as it uses a new OS layout called WIMBoot. In brief, the recovery partition contains essential compressed .wim files that Windows loads as needed during normal operation. Thus deleting the recovery drive thoroughly breaks your OS.

I had wondered why, after copying the recovery partition to a USB drive I wasn't presented a Delete the recovery partition option as others were. It seems there was quite a good reason for it after all.

All this to say, the only solution is to reinstall from the recovery media. Unsurprisingly, this also recreates the recovery partition you had tried so hard to be rid of.

glinka
  • 111