Restore windows by pressing F10 at startup

[forever2000]

Hey guys...
I'm looking for software or a manual way of setting up computers with a system restore on a separate partition... Like with hp if you press F10 you can restore windows back to factory settings.... But the catch is it has to be free for I am doing it on many computers... I have used acronis true image 7 and I got the free key with it as well and I like it but I need to set this up for customers so the software can't have licenses’... All I need it the ability to boot into some kind of startup manager by pressing F10 or something and restoring windows without having to use a cd or DVD... any help would be great thanks

[Ob1]

you could use norton ghost to save an image of the system by creating two partitions. one for the OS and one for the system restore partition, then just give them a bootable ghost disc to boot into the utility to run the wizard to restore there pc.

just dont install the actual program on each pc, you dont need to anyway, you just need to create a bootable cd rom or floppy disc. i would go with a bootable cd that they can use to boot into the ghost wizard to restore the partition.

[glc]

Ghost costs money just like Acronis. I do not know of any legal free way to do this. Acronis can do it from a partition, but it has to be bought and licensed for each computer.

[Ob1]

right ghost does cost money.

I thought you might be able to provide just a bootable disc to your clients without the actual full ghost program on it and it would be legal, since the only thing you can do is boot to the cd to restore or clone the drive... they can't install the program. since they wont have it.

you can get Acronis 9.0 from newegg for $20 right now.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16832200204

[glc]

There is no multilicensing option for Home - so that would be $20 per machine. You may want to contact Acronis directly and see what they suggest for what you are planning to do - they do work very closely with OEM's for this kind of stuff.

[forever2000]

thanks guys.... I've been doing alot of googling and havn't found anything... I think I'm going to take glc's advise and contact Acronis and see what I can do with them... thanks again guys for all you suggestions....