Another fresh start thread

[Geezer69]

Hi guys.

Straight of the bat, I am a noob at this - so apologies for what may appear stupid/obvious questions.

I have a five year old Toshiba laptop running Vista. I would like to wipe clean by doing a fresh install of Windows. When I bought this from the shop, the guy/rep said that I would not be getting a disc with windows on as it is on a partition of the HDD. The windows serial key is underneath the laptop, so this made sense at the time. Now I have gone to try and reinstall Windows (pressing f8 I think during startup) it is asking for a disc

I have now since moved onto a new laptop but I would still like to wipe clean and start again. The guy in PC World (I know, I know) said that I could just buy a recovery disc from ebay - is this true? What would be the best way to approach this? Any advice would be greatly appreciated

 

[eugenerudenko]

If everything is right you don't need to any recovery disk to restore your system. I've done that on my HP with no problems at all. Have you deleted any files from the recovery partition?
As of buying disk from ebay - can't tell you. Never tried.

 

[Geezer69]

Have you deleted any files from the recovery partition?

Is it accessible? How would I tell?

 

[Wild Weasel]

If it didn't come with a recovery disk you can make your own provided the recovery image isn't corrupt, but you'll need some blank DVDs.

There'll be a utility called the Toshiba Recovery Disk Creator, which is probably in the Toshiba folder on the Start menu (it might me in a sub-menu called Utilities).

It'll tell you how many disks you'll need (between 2-5) before you start. Just put the first blank DVD in the drive and click 'create' and it'll start making disk 1. Feed it disks on demand and it'll make the set for you. remember to label them by number as they come out.




Below is the normal process for factory restoring Toshiba computers with Win Vista or 7 via the hard drive recovery partition. Back up your data first or you'll lose it.

Make sure the power lead is plugged in.

Turn it on and tap the F8 key straight away.

Choose 'repair your computer' from the menu that comes up.

After a minute it'll ask you to pick the keyboard layout from a list of countries, so choose United Kingdom & press next.

Pick your Windows user name from the drop down menu and enter your password if you have one.

On the next page, choose the bottom option (Toshiba HDD recovery) from the list.

It'll warn you more than once that it will wipe the computer back to factory settings, so just go ahead if you are ready.

Once started it'll take at least 30-40 minutes to complete and may restart a few times. Once it has finished it will be just like it was when you took it out of the box originally.

 

[next010]

I'd consider skipping windows vista re-install altogether. Win vista is definitely one of the slower versions of Windows and you might notice a sizeable difference updating to a later version.

Get the Win 8 Pro upgrade for £49 this will give you the disc too plus serial key, doesn't matter if windows vista is not present on the HDD you can still activate on a clean install via this registry tweak.

Then get startisback for £2 to give you the old school start menu and hide the touch screen orientated start screen. Behaves the same as windows 7 but with the added improvements of win 8, speed boost & runs faster, better hardware support, better version of explorer.

 

[Geezer69]

Thank you so much guys, really appreciate the time you have taken to write your thorough replies.

I really don't want to spend anymore money on this laptop, so I think I will go for the recovery disc option.

Again, AVF member's have been more than invaluable.

 

[excollier]

You might consider linux, it's free and every bit as good as Windows.

 

[Geezer69]

If it didn't come with a recovery disk you can make your own provided the recovery image isn't corrupt, but you'll need some blank DVDs.

There'll be a utility called the Toshiba Recovery Disk Creator, which is probably in the Toshiba folder on the Start menu (it might me in a sub-menu called Utilities) .

Brilliant!! My laptop doesn't have disk recovery. I had a look at the Toshiba website and it is going to cost me £30 to buy a replacement disk!!

 

[Wild Weasel]

If there's no hard disk based recovery, then if would have come with a recovery DVD in the box.