Blacksheep

One thing about Win7, by the way, is that it often fails to start up correctly. I bought a Dell (when I should have already known better) with Win7 and it wasn't long before I had to do 2 or 3 shutdowns/startups each morning before the damn thing would come up right. The OS is just not all that stable.

I ended up putting my $500 Dell in the closet and buying a shop-built used PC with a Quad4 CPU and no HD, stuffed in 4 gigs of RAM and a mega hard drive, installed WinXP and that's what I'm using right now. I love it and no probs.

WinXP is the most stable OS Microsoft ever built, and now that there's no updates for it and it's a dinosaur, no one tries to hack it anymore - because everyone is using newer OS's so that's where the hackers ply their efforts now. It's safer than it ever was.

BOHICA

I have a Asus gaming laptop. It didn't come with a Windows CD, and I refuse to spend the money on one. Like I said, this computer has been used pretty hard, for over two years. It's been through a lot. I average over twelve hours a day on it surfing and playing games, and dealing with assholes like you (Sorry. Couldn't resist.):mrgreen: I've tried to baby it along, but it seems drastic measures are needed. I could probably fix the problems I have right now, but then new problems will pop up. I just have too much crap on this thing. I really think a clean start is in order.

Blacksheep

Okay. BUT, if you don't have a cd of an OS, how do you propose to get it running again? What operating system do you have to put on it after you wipe the drive? You have to have something. (Said one asshole to another.)

BOHICA

OK. We can both be assholes sometimes. We seem to pretty close politically, you just seem to have a problem with God. I'm OK with that. Why don't we just agree not to discuss it? I really don't have the energy for unnecessary roughness.

Back to your question. There is a partition on the hard drive that contains an image of your hard drive from the day you bought it. It will restore your hard drive to it's factory condition. You don't need a CD, but you do need the windows product id number. There is a simple script that will extract it for you. Just copy it down, then hit reset.

BOHICA

OK. We can both be assholes sometimes. We seem to pretty close politically, you just seem to have a problem with God. I'm OK with that. Why don't we just agree not to discuss it? I really don't have the energy for unnecessary roughness.

Back to your question. ASUS laptops contain a recovery partition that includes software designed to restore the laptop to its original condition. All you need is your windows product id code. This can be retrieved with a simple script.

http://smallbusiness.chron.com/restore-asus-laptop-factory-settings-53444.html

Blacksheep

No no no. I don't have a problem with God, not at all. See? You complained that I didn't read your introduction but you never read anything at all that I have to say, many times, about God. I have God in my life. I'm just against religions. God didn't create religion, and no religion created God, but all religions say God is this or that, says this or that, does this or that, and I say all of it is crap made up by charlatans and witch doctors.

Okay. The hard drive is not the operating system. The HD is hardware, the OS is software. If you want to wipe the drive, just get into a Dos prompt, which I think I recall you can do from Start, and type format C:\ and hit enter. That will reformat the HD, removing everything.

Then you'll still have to install the Operating System of your choice from a CD before you can start reinstalling software onto your computer.

That image you're talking about is the drivers for the motherboard. That's not even Safe Mode, that's just the motherboard-operating software in a memory chip, and it will not ever restore your system to operational condition once you wipe off your hard drive. You MUST HAVE an OS on a CD to install to get your computer operational again.

Bottom line, you have to have an OS CD of some sort. I would advise that you either see if you can buy a viable used copy from a local computer shop, get one from a friend, or buy one off eBay, before you actually wipe your hard drive.

Blacksheep

Okay, I read that website link you gave. Here's the important part: "Copy any important files from the laptop to an alternate storage device before restoring the computer to the factory settings."

This tells me that your all your files will be deleted, and the website also refers to formatting the hard drive. Restoring to factory settings means cleaning off everything.

It says that Windows will be reinstalled, "just follow the instructions", but chances are pretty good that one of the instructions will be to "insert windows 7 CD into cd player and type in serial number when requested".

Maybe not, maybe you actually do have a compressed copy of Win7 on a hidden partition, but I'll be amazed if that turns out to be true.

You got me involved, now, so I'm curious. Let me know how this all turns out, huh?

BOHICA

Piece of cake. I didn't need the CD, or even the password. It restored my PC to factory conditions. Gonna be a lot of downloading in my future...sigh.

Ayway, I'm still losing my network adapter, after a restart. What does that tell you? Hardware problem? Of course, I didn't update my drivers yet, but I'm not hopeful.

BOHICA

UGGHHH!!! 174 Windows updates!

PoppaGringo Loc: Muslim City, Mexifornia, B.R.

Try a 'shut down' instead of 'restart'.

BOHICA

It does it after a shut down too. I know it's not a software issue, since I just nuked the hard drive. It has to be hardware related.

PoppaGringo Loc: Muslim City, Mexifornia, B.R.

While that is conceivable, it could still be a well-buried v***s. Some of them are very insidious and able to hide in places one would never suspect.

AuntiE Loc: 45th Least Free State

Call Asus. Progeny has one that is three years old. When there were some problems, they were very responsive.

Blacksheep

Well, that's definitely different, but I'm glad your restore function worked. 174 updates? A copy of the OS can't be that expensive.

PoppaGringo Loc: Muslim City, Mexifornia, B.R.

Thru Best Buy, if memory serves, it is about $169/$179 if they install it. I don't remember if there is an additional charge for the installation.