PC Factory Settings

[DJ Frankie]

Hi All

I need to reset my PC back to its original factory settings as my PC in general is slow and I think over the years it has been crammed with lots of junk software due to all the family use it.
Without having to use my recovery Cd which I can locate at present, does anyone know how to reset this? im currently running a HP desktop on XP, any help would be great.

Frankie

[Solitaire Events Ltd]

I had to do this recently with one of kids netbooks.

Most XP computers have the O/S on the C drive. Look for winnt32.exe in Windows on your C drive. This will reinstall your O/S for you. The only problem is, that's all it installs. You need all your drivers too, so it takes a while finding and downloading them.

I found a site that built a driver recovery disc for me - I think it was about a tenner.

Before you re-install, see if you can find a driver package, otherwise you might spend a long time trying to find everything.

Oh, and make sure you back everything up first!

Try here for drivers.

[Marc J]

Try hitting different keys as it's booting up - i.e. as soon as you power on.

Usually f11 or f10.

If it has a recovery partition this'll kick in the recovery software. Be warned - it'll wipe everything on drive C.

[DJ Frankie]

Thanks Chaps I will try this out.