How do you restart the WHOLE computer sytem?
Ok, my friend gave me his laptop for free and when I went on the laptop it had a lot of his personal stuff, a lot of music I dislike , wrong settings for virtually everything I had, a lot of unnecessary stuff downloaded. So I was wondering how do I restart the whole system which will delete everything and make the computer sort of start over? I remember having my other computer repaired and he wiped out eveyrthing. Really appreciate any feedback which contributes to this issue. Thanks!
Unfortunately my friend did not give me any CD with it, just the laptop and charger. I really want to restart it too because he did state that their may be a virus located in it. If anyone can help me, please state where besides the CD that does it because I don’t have it. I will REALLY,REALLY appreciate it!
Sometimes Dells and HPs (and others) have a hidden restore partition. Unfortunately there is no standard way to access it. You’d have to visit the support website of the manufacturer and see 1) if that model has a restore partition and 2) how to access it.
Nuke the whole computer. Buy a copy of Windows Vista or try Ubuntu Linux, its free !
Reformat the hard drive This site provides all of the answers.
Hopefully you have either windows xp or vista disc, or at least a recovery CD.
Put the CD in and restart the machine, it should, if it’s a recovery disc ask you if you want to repair or reinstall windows, if you want to format the drive then pick reinstall windows, it may or may not give you format options as to which format you want to install windows to (generally this will be the largest partition, just pick the option with the higher number)
If it’s a windows or vista disc do the same, when the CD starts it will give you instructions on the screen, that should get you started, it will ask you if you want a Quick format, select that one, or it will tack about an hour onto your install time depending on the hard drive size. It’s pretty self explantory. That should get you started if you need more help theres TONS on the net.
One if you delete the hard drive you must be prepared to have a system operating disk and drivers to put back on the hard drive. What type of Laptop do you have? You can do a search and download the drivers needed for that type of Laptop to a disk, free. I suggest you do this before you wipe out anything. If your running windows you must have a copy of the system operating disk. Now once you have both of those you can go forth and clear the hard drive by deleting the partition. Be careful because there are 2 of them and you only need to delete one. I would go into more detail but I don’t have enough space to tell you. Contact me at and I’ll see if I can assist you further.
Right click your hard drive, hit format I think?
Yeah. Just remove your Windows OS, reinstall it. And start from the top.