Gaming Anyone know how to do a complete burn/system restore?

[kevenka]

Hi,
My acer has been acting up for a while and if I system restore, it wouldn't do much because they only go up to abot 7 days ago while I had these problems for months now. *I suppose I should've restored it immediately after I noticed these slowdowns but I thought it would go away in time*. Anywho, does anyone know how to completely wipe an acer clean and restore the defaults?
-Thanks,
Kevin

 

[Minox]

Format the HDD and then reinstall.

Some computers have a built-in restore function though and even though I find it useless myself it may just be that kind of function you're looking for.

 

[kevenka]

ty! is it easy to format the hdd?

 

[juggernaut911]

Yeah. There are alot of ways to do it. A format function is built into XP, Vista and 7 installs.

 

[Rayder]

Yeah. There are alot of ways to do it. A format function is built into XP, Vista and 7 installs.

Don't overestimate the abilities of other people. You and I don't know the PC literacy of kevenka. Formatting a PC can be a nightmare for people who don't know how, even if Windows seems to walk you through the process to US. Why do you think PC tech's make so much money?

First, go to the Acer website and look up all the drivers you will need for your model of PC. Be sure to get the drivers for YOUR EXACT setup. Download and store away all the various drivers for your system on either a disk or USb storage device.

.......


Aw man! I'm too drunk to help you you right now....and I really would like to, but this is taking too long to type out as it is....I need to go to bed.....................too many beers, hiccups....blurry screen.....i'm sorry.....I gotta go...not kiidding...hope someone else can help you.

If its a laptip, don't you have backup disks?

Oh crap! I just got a call that my life-long firend...knew him sine i was 7 (i'm 41) just had a heart attack! I was just over his house on saturday, I gotta go!

 

[Minox]

Yeah. There are alot of ways to do it. A format function is built into XP, Vista and 7 installs.

Don't overestimate the abilities of other people. You and I don't know the PC literacy of kevenka. Formatting a PC can be a nightmare for people who don't know how, even if Windows seems to walk you through the process to US. Why do you think PC tech's make so much money?

First, go to the Acer website and look up all the drivers you will need for your model of PC. Be sure to get the drivers for YOUR EXACT setup. Download and store away all the various drivers for your system on either a disk or USb storage device.

To continue where Rayder went incapable to write...

First make sure that you have all the drivers that you'll need for your laptop. After you have that, put the Windows (yes, I'm going to assume you're using Windows) CD/DVD in and boot from your CD/DVD drive from the BIOS of your laptop. Your computer should then enter the installation mode for that specific Windows version of your computer. In that installation there will be an option where you have to select which hard drive you're going to install too and along with that option there should also be an option to erase (format) the old hard drive. Select that you want to format the hard drive, wait for it to finish and then proceed with the Windows installation by selecting that you want to install to that partition which you just formatted. Continue with the installation and let it finish and then Windows should be properly installed. After that, what you want o do is to install all the drivers that you got before starting the install and install them. If all goes well you should have a new fresh Windows installation.

There's another possible scenario that could happen when doing the above if you have an OEM Windows CD/DVD, when booting up the CD/DVD it may enter a similar recovery mode to which I'm going to explain below except it'll be run from the CD/DVD instead of the HDD. If that's the case there should be less options ie less stuff that could go wrong.


If this sounds a little hard, and you're not too experienced with computers you may want to try to restore it using the built-in recovery function that may or may not exist by pressing ALT+F10 when starting up your computer (you may want to press ALT+F10 multiple times to make sure you enter this mode if it exists). If this works you're going to end up in some sort of recovery menu which shouldn't be too hard to understand as they usually don't give you too many options and it should then restore the computer to a point where you should have a clean Windows install with the exception being any applications that Acer decided you must have in which case you may want to uninstall some of these.

 

[kevenka]

Thanks everyone! Yeah, I am not too good with computers but I'll take the information you guys gave and try the best I can with what I know =]
Much appreciated!
-Kevin

 

[moose3]

Might be a bit late, but norton ghost is a system imaging/backup utility, not sure if there is an open source/free substitute out there.

 

[tal32123]

idk i had the system restore dvd's and went to system restore to make an easy yet affective system restore