Here's the solution... at least for me it was.
Like everyone else I've been looking on the internet for how to recover my HP550.
What do you find... in Vista go to Recovery Manager and restore to its original factory state.
But the restore function in Vista didn't fix the problem for me.
So how do I get to the Recovery Manager on startup.
Again I refered to the internet.
Then you'l find an option F11.
I've tried it all but F11 didn't work for me.
So I began to wonder if there even is a recovery partition on the HP550.
I can see a recovery partition, so let's hope there's something on it.. hihi.
What now? Back to the internet!
Then i've found the
HP 550 Notebook PC Maintenance and Service Guide.
In section 8 i found the next lines about how to recover the original hard drive image using F11.
3. Turn on or restart the computer, and then press esc while the “Press the ESC key for Startup Menu”
message is displayed at the bottom of the screen.
4. Press f11 while the “Press <F11> for recovery” message is displayed on the screen.
5. Follow the on-screen instructions.
I never used the F11 key

, but the ESC key did it for me.
Hit ESC several times on startup, in the menu you'll get use F8 to go to the advanced options.
Select: Restore harddrive to its original factory state.
Follow the instructions. That's it!
I hope to get some possitive replies.
Good Luck!!!
David van G.
The Netherlands