start fresh

[Beezle_Boss]

My sister has a laptop with windows vista and she wants me to make it faster by doing a system restore. I put all of her documents that she wants to keep on a external hard drive. Whats the next step or is there something else I can do?

[Nuclear Krusader]

What kind of laptop is it: brand, OS, etc.?

[Beezle_Boss]

Originally Posted by Nuclear Krusader What kind of laptop is it: brand, OS, etc.?

Its a Toshiba Satellite with Windows Vista installed on it.

[Nuclear Krusader]

Make sure you are done backing up everything, including Outlook/Outlook Express messages and contacts (export them).

Once you've done that, just do the restore to factory defaults. It'll format the HDD and install everything that came with it. Afterwards you have to spend some time uninstalling useless programs which laptop manufacturers love to load their machines with.

Additionally, before you restore, check if you can generate restore CDs with the Toshiba utilities (some laptops let you do this, some don't); in case things go bad, you don't want to be ordering the recovery media from Toshiba.

[Beezle_Boss]

Originally Posted by Nuclear Krusader Make sure you are done backing up everything, including Outlook/Outlook Express messages and contacts (export them). Once you've done that, just do the restore to factory defaults. It'll format the HDD and install everything that came with it. Afterwards you have to spend some time uninstalling useless programs which laptop manufacturers love to load their machines with. Additionally, before you restore, check if you can generate restore CDs with the Toshiba utilities (some laptops let you do this, some don't); in case things go bad, you don't want to be ordering the recovery media from Toshiba.

I have everything she needs on her external hard drive and I ready to restore. Can I get a step by step instructions on how to get this computer to factory settings? I dont have any CD's so I'm wondering if its ok to just restore her computer without a restore CD.

[glc]

Download the manual for it, the options and procedures should be in it.

[Nuclear Krusader]

Do as G says. For the record, Toshiba has a "system" to get into the restore thing: you have to turn the machine off, then press the 0 key, hold it and then press the power button.

http://cdgenp01.csd.toshiba.com/cont...339010_web.pdf

After that, the process is pretty straightforward. I wouldn't recommend tampering with the partitions, just use the defaults. I've seen laptops in which the hidden partition was wiped out or became inaccessible after the user went "Advanced" and created/deleted partions on the hard drive.