basic computer question

[medstudent2006]

hi everyone: this is my 1st post on this forum, and i have a seemingly easy question, please. i was just given a laptop from my brother-in-law who is moving out of town, but the only caveat is, he didn't delete all of his things on it. so basically, it has all of his programs, pictures, documents, etc. i want to erase everything and have it be all "new" for me. is there any way that i can do that, without manually going through each and every file and deleting things? he didn't give me any programs or CDs, either, but maybe i can use the things that my desktop came with. any info you could provide would be very helpful. thanks so much!!!

 

[jblaze725]

if you have an os on cd you can reinstall the os on the laptop and that will give you a clean slate to work from.

 

[medstudent2006]

i may have an operating system from my other computer or from my fiancee's laptop. can i use that? and how do i proceed?

thanks!

 

[medstudent2006]

also, are all AC adapters the same? can i use my fiancee's toshiba adapter for my compaq laptop?

 

[Hugo82]

Boot from CD by changing the boot settings in BIOS (hit del on startup) and then continue from there

 

[WARLORD88]

Put the cd recover in the cd drive and then restart the comp and the cd will boot from there, works for me.

 

[medstudent2006]

thanks so much for the replies. now if only i can find this CD recovery, i'll be fine. thanks!