Wipe a laptop

Hi,

I have an old Fujitsu Siemens laptop kicking about and wondering if I can reboot it factory settings without losing the operating system and just how I would go about it.

I just want to start it afresh as Its to be a spare work laptop so just want the essentials on it only.

Any ideas?

Did it come with recovery disks or is the recovery system on the HDD ? Either way it should be possible by one of those two methods.


Paul

Cheers Paul. No disks and no sign of a built in HDD one either unfortunately. My Acer had the option on start up but can't see anything on here so I think I'd need the disks. Ah well.

wasp said:

Cheers Paul. No disks and no sign of a built in HDD one either unfortunately. My Acer had the option on start up but can't see anything on here so I think I'd need the disks. Ah well.

Click to expand...

has it got a licence sticker on it anywhere? If so, just load the OS from a Win CD (which you can borrow) and dial in the code when asked.

If you have checked your pc with windows explorer and you don't see a D drive with a factory image on it, don't have any disks and want to keep the same OS then I would suggest using the add/remove programs function in the control panel and use that to remove all the fluff you don't need, then run ccleaner to blow out the cobwebs from the drive and the registry. Not ideal but simple and will work ok.

If you've had the pc from new and haven't messed with it over much then I would probably first google the net for your pc as you may still have an image intact and you may find instructions to start the thing off. The makers website would obveously be the first port of call. It would be a shame to blow away the factory image, my mate did that cos he couldn't see one on his laptop and wiped out the partition, losing the lot.

Cheers all. I think I will give them a call on Monday and see what they say (Fujitsu siemens). As you say LM, not really keen on losing the lot or doing something I'd regret. I have given it a full clean with add/remove programs, CCleaner etc so I'll see what they say on Monday.

Thinking about it, I have probably streamlined it more than Vista factory settings anyhow!!!

just had a quick look on google and Fujitsu siemens laptops have a hidden partition called WinRE, which is the factory image. To kick it off press F8 on startup and you should get a restore system screen, worth a try.

Cheers LM but you got me paranoid now the thing won't come back on again and I'll kill it completely!

there is no way to reset a laptop to factory installation without wiping out all your current data, most vendors hidden partitions dont contain the full setup required to complete your task. the only way is with the factory cd that comes with the laptop or a manual build of windows with a windows installation cd (you will probably need to have the drivers at hand to at least get you on the network do that you can download the rest of the drivers from their site..

wasp, have a look at this..

http://www.trade2win.com/boards/gen...6-tired-computer-problems-try.html#post472404