bought a 2nd hand laptop

credit_crunch

hey everyone

i have bought my mums old laptop as she has upgraded.

i was wanting to restore it to factory settings to remove all her pics, anti virus software etc, and to try & give it a new lease of life!

any suggestion on how i go about this?

i also want to use trend micro for the anti virus etc as this is what i use on my pc & i like it

the wireless doesnt seem to be working on this - i can only access the internet with the yellow ethernet cable connected. again any ideas on how i fix this?

i dont have any disks with this laptop - just it & the power lead.

thanks in advance

closed

google the model and factory restore, most have a factory restore partition which takes around 10 minutes to do. Make sure she got all her data backed up before you go ahead.

avast 6 free is lighter than trend

If you have no factory restore partition, no disc, and no means of creating or obtaining/borrowing one, you could try deleting all her data, create new user profile, then follow this

https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/2436849

re wireless, check the wireless drivers are installed in device manager, check the wireless is switched on if it has a switch or key combinations, and then connect to your router's ssid (network name), and enter the correct encryption key and encryption type - these can be found by connecting to your router config screen if you don't know them

If you need further advice, post some details, laptop model, operating system, hijackthis log, router model, etc.

patman99

If you post the make/model, then it would help us to help you.

Usually, it is 'F12' that starts the recovery system.

If you don't have a switch for the wireless, then try 'Fn+F2' as this is the general key-combo.

Bargain.hunter_4

To save yourrself a lot of hard work, you could try to see if system restore takes it back to a date where there is minimal junk on it, then just create a new administrator id and delete the old one.

marms

Bargain.hunter wrote: »

To save yourrself a lot of hard work, you could try to see if system restore takes it back to a date where there is minimal junk on it, then just create a new administrator id and delete the old one.

Windows deletes old restore points when creating new ones, otherwise sysyem restore would use all the hard drive so it's unlikely to have such an old restore point.

credit_crunch

thanks everyone for your comments.

i will find a few hours 2day to sit down & have a go.

its a compaq f600. It is wireless enabled, but when i remove the ethernet cable it says it cant find any networks, i have a usb stick that makes my dell pc wireless & i have tried using this in the laptop but hasn't worked so far.

thanks again

tomuk_82

The Presario F6xx range have a HDD (Hard Disk Drive) based recovery as mentioned above (If the partition as been deleted you can order replacement disks from compaqs web site or use a free operating system such as Ubuntu).

There are 2 ways of restoring this machine via the HDD based recovery.

Option 1

As soon as you turn on your PC, tap the F11 key on the keyboard while the "Press F11 for recovery" message is displayed; continue tapping until you get the "Windows is loading files..." message.
When Recovery Manager has loaded click advanced options

Choose system recovery
To run the recovery without backing up your data choose to recover without back up
The recovery will launch and restore your system back to it's factory default state

Option 2

You can start the recovery from within Windows as follows:

Click Start
Click All Programs
Click Recovery Manager
Click Recovery Manager again

Click next when the Recovery Manager program loads. You will be prompted with several questions before the recovery starts.
"Would you like to perform a program recovery?" - choose no
"Would you like to perform a driver recovery?" - choose no
"Would you like to launch Microsoft System Restore?" - choose no
"Would you like to recover your computer to its original factory condition?" - choose yes

The computer will now restart and launch the recovery program.

credit_crunch

hey everyone. i finally got round to rebooting this laptop & it worked really well. all restored to factory settings, but the wireless connection still isnt working.

i can only get connected to the internet when the yellow ethernet is connected. the laptop is wireless enable, but i cant figure out how to get it to work!

for my pc i have to use a usb adapter to make the internet wireless but again this doesnt seem to work.

i will prob have to leave it into a computer repair shop, as I dont know anyone who will be able to look at it for me without charging a fortune :-(

if anyone has any suggestions i would greatly appreciate it!

thanks in advance

closed

Is the inbuilt wireless working in device manager?

have you entered the wireless network name and encryption key?

credit_crunch

closed wrote: »

Is the inbuilt wireless working in device manager?

have you entered the wireless network name and encryption key?

hi, thanks for your comment. i cant see anything relating to wireless within the device manager.

any further tips appreciated! thank you x

closed

under network adapters?

is the wireless light on?