How to get laptop back to original state?

Four of a kind

The girlfriends 2 year old Samsung laptop has started to really slow down. Its basically just a web browsing laptop but has load of photos and videos all over the hard drive on it.

I told her it might be possible to wipe it and reset it back to the way it came out of the box? Is this possible?

I have made an external copy of all the stuff she wants kept, namely the photo's and videos.

So what's the next step in regards to doing a full reinstall in order to get the laptop back to the original condition?

Thanks lads.

Reamer Fanny

Four of a kind wrote: »

The girlfriends 2 year old Samsung laptop has started to really slow down. Its basically just a web browsing laptop but has load of photos and videos all over the hard drive on it.

I told her it might be possible to wipe it and reset it back to the way it came out of the box? Is this possible?

I have made an external copy of all the stuff she wants kept, namely the photo's and videos.

So what's the next step in regards to doing a full reinstall in order to get the laptop back to the original condition?

Thanks lads.

There should be some tools to restore back to factory condition most laptops nowadays have a separate partition for this exact purpose, look under program's for recovery or support tools it's hard to say without knowing the exact model.

Darius.Tr

If there's no tool to restore your laptop back to its original way. You could reinstall OS and format your main partition where windows is installed and keep all the files that you need in other partition. This way you will keep all your files and your laptop will work faster. I tend to do this anually to keep my pc not laggy.

Four of a kind

I am not too savy when it comes to doing stuff like this and I don't really understand what partitioning means/does.

I'll have a look to see if there's recovery tools and what model it is.
Thanks

Overheal

Four of a kind wrote: »

I am not too savy when it comes to doing stuff like this and I don't really understand what partitioning means/does.

I'll have a look to see if there's recovery tools and what model it is.
Thanks

A partition is like you C:\ Drive, \ Drive, etc.

On a PC Hard Drive, each partition is just a big section that the others aren't part of. So, if you get a nasty virus on C:\, it won't (typically) corrupt \. Likewise in this case your laptop will normally have recovery tools on \ or E:\ that are designed to safely Nuke and Reprogram C:\.

How to access this? Normally if you are rebooting the PC when you first hit power, Mash the F-keys. I never remember which one. Doesn't matter. Mash all the Keys between F5 to F12 :P you will see the option to enter System Recovery from there you follow the prompts to perform a factory reset.

THIS WILL ERASE ALL DATA ON YOUR C:\ DRIVE. Make sure you have made a copy of your documents, photos, etc. on a seperate drive, or a backup drive.

In terms of DIY, this is easy enough to figure out, it's just time consuming. Arguably, you could get a quote from a PC Tech to do the file backup and the system wipe for you. Even for someone who knows that they're doing, it's still a long, time consuming process, nevermind a learning curve. Especially if your files are scattered every way from sunday.

Capt'n Midnight

Darius.Tr wrote: »

If there's no tool to restore your laptop back to its original way. You could reinstall OS and format your main partition where windows is installed and keep all the files that you need in other partition. This way you will keep all your files and your laptop will work faster. I tend to do this anually to keep my pc not laggy.

This only applies where the manufacturer has supplied windows media and driver disks. For home user machines that's the exception rather than the rule.
IMHO As a general rule if you have a windows OS that's more than two years older than the laptop you are reinstalling on you better have all the drivers, especially the hard drive controller , motherboard and network card to hand or there will be tears and frustration. - Of course if you have a recovery image all that stuff will be there.


Ask in Laptops what the procedure is for you model of laptop
check that there isn't a recovery partition accessible by pressing F11 during boot (this varies by brand)
check the program menu for samsung to see if there is a recovery disk making utility.


NB during setup - get the keyboard and language settings right - saves a lot of time trying to do it later on
If you restore from a recovery image you have a few little jobs to do to get the system tickedy boo


get the pcdecrapifier to remove the trialware
head over to ninite.com and pick the basic apps to install
then to filehippo for anything else you fancy ( if user isn't clued up it's not a bad idea to tell them to only install from filehippo )
finally downloas psi from secunia to make sure all the apps get patched automatically

Four of a kind

This tutorial was recommended by a mate to do a clean reinstall:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mME9VLT7-xw&feature=youtube_gdata_player

As long as I have all my important docs and files backed up I should be ok to try this yeah?

Four of a kind

I tested out reinstalling a netbook that I have lying around and everything worked fine. However, I don't know hot to connect with the existing wifi connection in the house as it shows up as no connections available on the netbook?

How do I go about getting the netbook back connected to wifi?

It seems as if I don't have any wireless adapter/drivers??

I can't remember this been a problem initially when I set up the netbook out of the box a year ago

Four of a kind

Four of a kind wrote: »

I tested out reinstalling a netbook that I have lying around and everything worked fine. However, I don't know hot to connect with the existing wifi connection in the house as it shows up as no connections available on the netbook?

How do I go about getting the netbook back connected to wifi?

It seems as if I don't have any wireless adapter/drivers??

I can't remember this been a problem initially when I set up the netbook out of the box a year ago

Any help on this one please

Overheal

possible your netbooks wifi driver isnt there yet. a direct connection to your home router may be required. using an ethernet cable hook the netbook into the router and run windows update on it.

Capt'n Midnight

Just on the off chance, does the netbook have a physical on/off switch for the wifi ?

Four of a kind

Overheal wrote: »

possible your netbooks wifi driver isnt there yet. a direct connection to your home router may be required. using an ethernet cable hook the netbook into the router and run windows update on it.

Ok, I'll try this tomorrow and see how things go.

Capt'n Midnight wrote: »

Just on the off chance, does the netbook have a physical on/off switch for the wifi ?

No it doesn't have a physical on/off wifi switch.

Four of a kind

Overheal wrote: »

possible your netbooks wifi driver isnt there yet. a direct connection to your home router may be required. using an ethernet cable hook the netbook into the router and run windows update on it.

This did the trick!! thanks everyone for the info