Reimage a laptop

allanb49

Hi guys,

My fianceés laptop is on it's last legs, and trying to get a little bit more life out of it while we can before we can afford a new one. So i'm thinking of reimaging it. Thing is i don't know how,

I've looked on google for some info but it's all a bit too technichal. It does seem easy enough but just wondering if someone here could talk me through it.

bhickey

What is it that's wrong with the laptop, what are you hoping to achieve and what exactly do you mean by "reimaging it"?

allanb49

Load of drivers are missing, My creative was working with it one day and the next it won't connect, Will connect with other computers and the usb ports are all working, sound goes now and then, slow. Takes a good while to start up.

Might just stick it out and buy a new laptop for her.

BoB_BoT

Possibly you mean restore it to like it was out of the factory/shop?

To do that your laptop needs either a recovery partition or recovery disks. What make/model is your laptop and roughly how old? Also, do note, that by doing a factory restore / reinstall you'll more than likely lose the files on it. Be sure to back up the important files first before you mess around with anything.

allanb49

getting a loan of a HDD to temporarily store all files we need, jesus, it's about 5 years old not sure what dell model number it is think inspirion 2400. She lost all the recovery disks ages ago which is the stickler

bhickey

allanb49 wrote: »

She lost all the recovery disks ages ago which is the stickler

Don't worry, just borrow a Dell XP CD from someone and it'll re-install fine. Firstly, download all the drivers that you might need for that particular model (especially the network card driver) from the Dell website's Support area and keep them on a USB key or a CD for later.

All this will of course only get you as far as Windows being re-installed and won't re-install any applications that you might have on the laptop.