Please Help, how to reformat with recovery CD

Hey guys,

I want to do a clean install using the Asus recovery cd. I have most of my important files backed up on a DVD and I want to do a reformat of my laptop as from the original box state. I have the Asus recovery CD but I am clueless on what to do. Do I just pop in the CD and let it work its magic? Or do I have to do this from Bios? Tried to search with no avail, this is Vista by the way.

I have two partitions on my Hard drive C and D and I want just everything back to out of box state.

 

Well you will first have to change the booting priority to the cd first then insert the cd then restart. It should start up with the recovery disc.

That is basically how you do it with every recovery disc.

 

How do I change the booting priorty? In Bios? SOrry im a noob!

 

Press F10 at startup and go to boot settings. the cd drive must be the first one to boot so you have to change it

 

Ok thanks, now I get three options. If I want to reformat everything, do I click:
Recover Windows to entire HD or
Recover Windows to entire HD with 2 partition

 

I think the option lets you just choose how many partion you wnat in the HD. Not really sure but it should tell you what Drive to reformat. Well some of recovery discs lets the user to choose which driver to format

 

Ummm is everything going fine?

 

Hehe thanks for the checkup! Yup im running it on my laptop and installing the Driver CD as we speak. Taking a while, good thing I still have my desktop.

Thanks again, you have been great help Shadowfate. And kudos for the followup!

 

Ok after reformating, I keep getting this Dos window after startup on my desktop stating:

C:\Windows\System32>start /w c:\preload\patch\SLEEP.exe 40
C:\Windows\System32>if exists c:\fac.txt start /REALTIME /min C:\Windows\PGMonitor.exe

and a bunch of other lists. Whats up with this? I just click the X to make it go away but still, never had this before

 

I am sorry but this is also the first time I heard about that. Will have to ask someone else.

I never really had trouble reformatting the hard drive

 

bryan looks like your problem even bumbfounded one of the best software guru here.

You might want to ask in the ASUS thread for answers and see if they had that similar problem

 

Thanks, ill do that right now. Cheers!

 

Okay hope you solve your problem

 

am planning to buy a new hard drive for my laptop, and can i recover the new hard drive so that i can run vista in that new drive.?? or do i have to get a new Vista to run in that new hard drive.?

 

u can reinstall vista into your new hard drive, what u need to do is re-active the windows. if u have a OEM vista key, it only allow to active once. if u want to active again, u need to active by phone. which mean u have to call to microsoft, and they will ask whts the problem why to re-active. simple answer is, o my computer crash, need to reformat. do not tell them that u ar using a laptop, because they dont like laptop or they will ask more questions over and over. so just say u got a desktop, and is keep crashing with vista or whtever and i want to reactive the windows.

 

Please start a new thread if you have a new question.

Otherwise, if you are using the recovery discs that came with your laptop or ones that you made yourself (usually using some software that came with your computer), you will need to 1) remove the old drive, 2) put in the new one, 3) then put in the recovery disc and start the computer. It will take a while to setup the system on the new hard disk.

After that is done, you will need to copy your data from the old computer to the new one, and you will also need to reinstall any other programs that you installed yourself. The best way to copy this data is to buy an external hard disk enclosure that will fit your old laptop drive, then plug it in via USB.

If your laptop can have 2 disks at the same time, then you can just put the old drive in the second disk bay.

Another option is to use software like Acronis Trueimage of DriveImageXML to make a full image of your current system, then you can restore that to the new disk.

This is a "clean install" and is not the same as using the recovery discs. If you want to do a clean install, please see my clean install guide, which also has software that allows you to avoid having to call Microsoft for activation.