How to use recovery partition

you guys know that 3.9GB recovery partition on the hard drive (doesn't have its own drive letter)? how do you activate the partition to allow my computer to reset to factory settings?

i remember dell has that feature and you press ctrl+F11 upon startup.

 

use F9 on startup
.. just used it 1.5 hrs ago actually.. very fast

 

thx. i got another question tho.

If you were to use the F9 thing, would it reset the whole computer to original factory settings from the CD (does it ask u to insert the cd), or does it copy off of the 3.9gb partition. i looked inside the 3.9 partition using a tool and it has some gho files for norton ghost.

so really, does the F9 restore use the gho image file to restore, or does it copy files off the cd?

just wondering, haven't tried it yet.

 

Everything comes off the HD in brand new condition. No CDs required. Make sue to backup anything important.

~ Brett

 

It restores whichever drives you want to factory settings. I used it once when I got a virus. Restored my "C" partition to factory settings and left the "D" alone. It does not need the CDs to do the restore.

 

ok. thanks. i read the instructions on that little sheet of paper inside the recovery dvd's case. if you used the recovery F9 feature, will the RECOVERY partition delete itself if I were to recover it once?

here's the thing I want to make sure before I do anything stupid:
It says "2. Recover Windows XP ____ to first partition only. This option will delete only the first partition, allowing you to keep other partitions, and create a new system partition as drive "c" "

so does the "first partition" refers to C:\, not the Recovery partition with no drive letter? technically, the recovery partition is the first partition on the hard drive if you were to look that up, followed by C:\, followed by D:\ (data)

i doubt any of the 3 restore options will delete the recovery partition, since asus strongly recommends against deleting that.

sorry for asking too much. i came from a dell and they dont give you anything but a bunch of bloatware and another messy way to restore the bloatware.

 

Correct, the recovery partition, using any of the options, will not delete itself. Recover to first partition will delete C: and replace it with the OS as it arrived. Anything on D: will remain so anything important should be backed up there and externally as well, just in case.

~ Brett

 

I would also have a question in this subject.

If I resize the partitions at some point, before the recovery, it will still use the resized sizes, won't it? So it doesn't do anything stupid because I resized the partitions?

 

I don't suppose so. If you choose recover to first partition, that's what it should do - pick the first partition and copy the Windows installation there. Given there's enough space, of course.

 

****, i deleted all the partitions, including the hidden one, and now i cant boot on anything except live cds.

i need to restore that 1st partition...if i accidently delted everything am i totally screwed?

 

You're not totally screwed at all

Just use the recovery CDs. Boot from the first one and follow the instructions. Choose to recover to first partition only, otherwise it will partition in a silly way (a very large system partition and a smaller data partition, not good in my opinion).

There's no way to recover the recovery partition however, so you're going to have to use the hours-long CD recovery process rather than the quicker HDD recovery, but... that's life. I don't suppose you're going to install Windows daily.

If you didn't overwrite the partition data, in principle you can even recover the partitions as they were originally, even though the partition table has been overwritten, but a specialist is required for that... I would need hours of googling just to begin suggesting steps on how to do that.