Vista - Restore laptop to "out of the box" setting.

I want to restore my compac laptop to the way it came out of the box. It is running vista home prem.. How do I do that? I bought the lap top used from a friend and want get the system back to "new" with all the software.

thanks.

You should have a restore CD or a restore mode to trigger on POST. Backup your data first.

I did back up everything last night. When I go to system restore I can't seem to find the date when the computer was "out of the box" to set a mannual date for the restore. No disk came with the computer.

thanks for helping out..

wp

Do you have a restore mode? Sometimes its hit F10-F12 to trigger it from a restore partition.

there is a "system restore" but only gives me recent dates to restore back to. I want to reset the entire computer to get rid of anything the previous owner had on the computer.

Thanks

Hello and welcome to the Forums!

Try continually tapping the F11 key on a re-boot.

Let us know.


Later Ted

ok. will let you know.

F11 was the key.. I am setting the laptop back to Factory standards now. (I am typeing on my home PC not the Laptop) just incase you were wondering how I was restoring and typeing at the same time.

thanks for your help. I will post when I have succeeded..

WP

Success. I have now restored my laptop to its orginial state. Much thanks to the folks on the forum.