This speaks of the HP Pavilion a8xx series, but should apply to most desktops/laptops that were made about the same time. It took a few conclusions for me to come to all this, as various hp/non-hp forums and postings leading to all this was quite diverse.
The HP PC System Recovery partition, is a sort-of hidden FAT32 unactive partition that is at the beginning of the physical disk, and not the end as some might think (as so with the Dell Restore Ghost partition containing FI.GHO). You can see all this with Disk Manager. When you try to explore the drive letter HP_RECOVERY (D:) with Windows Explorer, it responds with a slap on the wrist "Recovery Partition Warning!" saying you shouldn't be there. As long you don't attempt to purposely mess with the drive letter and contents, it should stay put and available on a rainy day.
Sometime during the lifetime of your HP PC, the <F10> from the POST screen doesn't really work anymore. The <F10> prompt appears there each time you turn on the PC, but pressing <F10> doesn't react at all, and the PC does its regular thing booting into Xp. Most likely a virus hit and/or you used a Xp install CD and did a manual fresh restore. You took care not to let the Xp install disc format the drive, but just reinstalled on the same partition it was already on. That definitely modified and destroyed something that the <F10> no doubt looks at. My guess is that the mbr is several sectors, and the boot is dependent on coding contained in all sectors.
Running the Start > Programs > PC Help & Tools > HP PC System Recovery application doesn't do anything either, it just reboots the computer back to where it was. You use the HP PC Recovery Tools CD and make one of these, you boot with it, but choosing the option to do a System Recovery is also of no help. And for purposes of discussion, you can't use the HP PC Recovery CD-DVD Creator, because you already did it, and have lost those discs.
One way to force the HP PC System Recovery is to make that HP_RECOVERY partition active. You can just do with the Disk Manager, select the HP_RECOVERY (D:) with mouse click using the button on the right. If you are unable to use Disk Manager because the Xp is messed, you can use one of many 3rd party drive partitioning utilities to set that first partition active, maybe even good old fdisk.exe . After doing so, the next reboot will start the scripted System Recovery process.
As certain as this solution will work, there must be a way to repair the <F10> to work. This is for the mercy of the uneducated end user that is unable to perform the above, but capable of using the <F10> -- only if it was working. IBM Lenovo has such a tool to repair the mbr in their Netvista/Thinkcentre PC for its own likewise <F11>, does HP have one too? If not, any proven solutions to fix the <F10>, besides imaging a hard drive from another HP PC that does have a working <F10>? This allows the end user to do without the unnecessary ball and chain of recovery discs (that they will lose again after buying them from HP), the whole point in the existence of recovery partitions in the first place.
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