How to restore a computer when you have no recovery discs
Posted by: Timothy Tibbetts on 01/20/2014 08:11 AM [ Comments ]
Someone recently asked on the Majorgeeks Facebook page about how to recover their computer when they do not have recovery CD or DVD’s. We have good news, and possibly bad news on how to do this.
A long time ago, computer companies stopped giving physical CD and DVD’s and instead started putting them on a hidden partition on your computer. In other words, you might see your main drive, C:, but there is often another drive on their with your operating system that you can access to restore your computer to factory new. There are often a few ways to access it so here’s the easiest ways:
One way would be to go to Start, Programs and look for your computer folder (Hewlett Packard, Dell, Toshiba, Compaq, whatever) and see if you can find a support folder, for example.
Finally, and honestly my favorite way would be to search for how to access it on boot. A simple search for anything, in this case I searched for HP Pavillion recovery, returns searches that come from the HP website. I quickly found all I need to do is tap F11 on start-up to access “Recovery Manager”.
If you can’t access your recovery then you have one of two problems (the bad news part)
It’s possible your computer DID come with recovery discs and you lost them.
Your computer operating system was replaced and overwritten. Odds are somewhere on your computer, usually on the back, there is a sticker saying what operating system came with it. If you have a different operating system installed then odds are someone wiped the partition (pretty common) when upgrading your operating system.
In this case, you need to find them or buy a new operating system
One way would be to go to Start, Programs and look for your computer folder (Hewlett Packard, Dell, Toshiba, Compaq, whatever) and see if you can find a support folder, for example.
Finally, and honestly my favorite way would be to search for how to access it on boot. A simple search for anything, in this case I searched for HP Pavillion recovery, returns searches that come from the HP website. I quickly found all I need to do is tap F11 on start-up to access “Recovery Manager”.
If you can’t access your recovery then you have one of two problems (the bad news part)
It’s possible your computer DID come with recovery discs and you lost them.
Your computer operating system was replaced and overwritten. Odds are somewhere on your computer, usually on the back, there is a sticker saying what operating system came with it. If you have a different operating system installed then odds are someone wiped the partition (pretty common) when upgrading your operating system.
In this case, you need to find them or buy a new operating system
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