reset Vista to factory...

[SirCyber]

I have a compaq laptop, no factory CD's... I need to reset it to factory settings to see if I can get rid of a few problems. ANY help would be much appreciated!

 

[MetalOwns]

Is there a recovery partition on the hard drive? Often times, they have those partitions instead of the CDs.

 

[carnageX]

They also usually make you burn your won discs.

 

[SirCyber]

it does have a recovery partition, but it's locked

 

[KSoD]

You will have to contact the Manufacturer and find out how you can burn a set of discs. That will be the only way to restore it to factory defaults.

 

[carnageX]

If you're gonna use the recovery partition, you should see a prompt at the POST screen, to press something like F10 For Recovery, along with the normal F1 for BIOS, or w/e it is on your machine. I've used it a couple times on a couple HP machines, and one of 'em had Vista on it, and it worked fine.

 

[Toroid]

These days most laptops don't include OS install DVDs or even recovery disks; the cheap *******s make you burn your own from the partition. There ought to be a utility specifically for burning the recovery disks from the (hidden) partition that is already installed on the laptop.

 

[carnageX]

These days most laptops don't include OS install DVDs or even recovery disks; the cheap *******s make you burn your own from the partition. There ought to be a utility specifically for burning the recovery disks from the (hidden) partition that is already installed on the laptop.

There is, on everyone of 'em that I've seen

These were on compaq/HP's although...shouldn't make a difference though. Heck, even my HP with XP had a built-in tool that allowed me to make the recovery disks....and every Vista machine that I've sold/set up for somebody also has this feature. Mind you, these were mostly HP's and Compaqs, not sure about other manufacturers' methods.

 

[atomic tofu]

sad thing is...with hp, I think it's either 1 time or up to 3 times that you can burn the reco discs....after the given amount you're out of luck...how's that for fair use, lol

of course, i'm using my 2 older hp systems as reference, I am not sure if they ever changed it

 

[KSoD]

Every manufacturer has a recovery partition. Dell, HP, Leveno, and every other laptop i have worked on has a recovery partition for you to use to burn your disc with.

So what they they dont include them? They give you the necessary tools to burn one. So you have to use a $0.75 DVD to burn your own media

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