A while back I downgraded a laptop which was made with Vista pre-installed to XP for gaming purposes, hence deleting the whole of C drive, wiping everything (including the HP Recovery Console) off it. So now when I start up, pressing F11 does nothing, so I cant access the Recovery Console. But I still have D drive which is a recovery drive that contains the factory settings and everything I need to recover the laptop if something went wrong. The only way I can think of to use D drive to re-install Vista is by booting it up, and to do this I need to mark the D partition as active if Im correct, yet when I try to do so the option in the drop down menu is greyed out. Im not even sure if Im doing everything right, but I would think its possible to boot up the recovery drive (D:), then install Vista, wiping everything off C drive and replacing it.. if any of that makes sense. I tried making D drive an active drive using Command Prompt and Disk Management, but on Disk Management the option to mark it as active is greyed out? :S Anyone know where Ive gone wrong?? Thanks!

Might try fdisk. You might try a live linux or live xp cd on that drive to see exactly what is on it and how it is used. It may not be bootable even if you make it active. Might find WIM file that you could use in a custom dvd. Might be a renamed ghost image file that can run with ghost even. (some toshibas do that) Whatever I you decide, might be sure to copy all that data off before you bork it more. (sorry just facts) The best way would be to order the factory dvd's to return it to OEM state I'd think. Playing to the angels Les Paul (1915-2009)

Recovery partitions are hidden and should not be seen in disk manager. If d: was the recovery partition then f11 would work. You do not have to boot vista to install it. If there is any install media on d: you should be able to boot via bootable cd, go to d: and find setup to start it. It would appear d: is not a primary partition which is why it greyed out in disk manager. You should contact hp support and get their advice.

The recovery partition normally holds an image 'file', which is not bootable. Depending upon which program created the image file (Ghost? Acronis? other?), it 'might' be possible to use it to do a restore.