Genealogy Chat

If I remember correctly on at least Acer & Hewlet Packard laptops if you press ctrl & F10 together you get a restore screen come up with two options one is for previous date and one is for factory settings.

Most laptops have a hidden partition on the hard drive which stores the set up information for that laptop, including Windows.

Stu in Hastings

hi carol &dion thank you for your repls i will have to think about what i want to do thank you again .

I may be mistaken but I always thought that it was a condition of the Windows License Agreement that the store has, when stores or PC manufacturers install Windows onto a PC they are going to sell then they have to supply a Restore Disk to the customer which is a copy of the Windows installation for that machine.

I have just last week bought a mini notebook, it does not have a CD Drive but when I insisted on having a Restore Disk CD anyway the store came up with it.

You can download software to wipe a hard drive clean that overwrites the hard disk with muliple 1's and 0's destroying any data that is on the disk after format. A format does not remove any data, it's all still there it's just that you cannot see it unless you have specialist recovery software.

If you are going to sell the PC then it will not get anywhere near as good a price if there is no OS on it.

Carol
www.genealogyprinters.com

hi carole thank you for your reply the reason i wish to take my laptop back to the manafacturers settings is i want to sell it and dont want any of my details or info left on it . it windows vista home basic,s

You cannot use someone else's CD to install WindowsXP and then put your own key in.

When XP is instaled for the first time on a PC it notes what your system is made up from, hard drive, processor, mother board etc. and awards each of those items points in a list, you can change one or 2 parts and it will be okay but if you try and install Windows onto another PC it phones home and checks the spec of the PC if it's not the same or very close to the original install it will not install.

Carol
www.genealogyprinters.com

hi angie i had the same thought and phoned my son he has the same computer as me so he says . said he woul d post it to me hopefuly prob solved. thank you all for your inputs.

hi jonsey i am running system visa there was no recovery disk nowith it sorry for the delay in replying had to pop out

I've bought 3 computers in recent years, including a laptop, and none have had anything called a recovery disc.

Maggie

PS I'm a bit useless with computers too, but I've kept all the discs in a wallet, and there ain't one called a recovery disc.

When you bought it it should of come with come CDroms one or two of them will be called "RECOVERY DISK" if you run them they will wipe everything.
save all your important files & Data to a CD or memory stick first.
once you have put it back to factory deafault
you then need to get all the security updates from microsoft.

Gary

hi jonesey sorry no body told me that as i am not very good with computers is there any way i can still do this or any way i can clear it

hi i would like to take my lap top back to how it was when i first brought it i/e wiped clean so i can start again is it poss. thank you.