Taking laptop back help..

paul2468

I bought a compaq cq56 laptop from john lewis 3 weeks ago and it has never worked right...phoned the shop and they said as it is under 28 says since i bought it i can take it back and have a refund......i intend to do this....can anyone tell me how i can restore it to factory setting ..ie the way it was when i bought it....is there any easy way around this..thanks...:beer:

sabz3008

Generally tapping the F10 key as soon as you switch the computer does give you a menu for the recovery partition, sometimes it's the F8 key, different per manufacture. Try a few, F8, F10 are generally the ones.

vicx

If your laptop did not come with a restore CD you can restore it by tapping one of the 'F' keys like sabz suggested.

I'm sure mine is F9 or F11. Try Google your laptop brand and model to see which key you need to press at start up.

phxweb

sabz3008 wrote: »

Generally tapping the F10 key as soon as you switch the computer does give you a menu for the recovery partition, sometimes it's the F8 key, different per manufacture. Try a few, F8, F10 are generally the ones.

assuming you have backed up your data first ....

Compaq seem to be having some reliability issues with the presarios ..... I have had to send 3 back on behalf of my customers in the last few months. As for mine, New Keyboard, new hard drive new mouse pad and now a new battery, all in the space of 5 months... LEMON!

vicx

You need to press F11 when your laptop is starting up, then a menu will pop up to go through the restore process.

Tigerspain

Hi!!!, My first post, hope it helps!!

Ok your problem unfortunatly isnt as simple as a factory reset like you would on a phone, The problem is that everything you have downloaded or installed on your computer (Inlcding pictres videos etc etc) are all stored on yor hard drive, Presming it's a new laptop I am gessing it came with windows 7? If so did you get the windows 7 disk with the computer? (Often not it's just pre installed) however if you have this then you can install a new version of windows on your machine, Then you need to:

Click the start button
Click 'computer' (right side of the start menu)
Double click 'local disk (c)'
At the bottom of this screen you need to go to 'windows old'
Right click this
Click delete

It will take about 5-10 minutes and you need to approve everything it asks if you want to delete, This will leave you with just the new blank operating system as it was when you got it.


If you Dont have the windows 7 disk the best thing to do is manually delete everything, Everything on you desktop that YOU have installed, Right click on it all (one by one) then select delete

Go to start and delete everything in:

Pictures
Documents
Downloads
Music
Videos

Make sure you then delete everything from the recycle bin after, Thats really as good as it gets.

That being said it is unlikely a reputable company like John lewis wouldnt do all this when it goes to be refurbished anyway as they wouldnt the next customer to have all your things on their new computer!!!


Hope this helps without being to complicated (or simple if your a computer person)

Tigerspain

Just to note the problem with the restore function as others have mentioned is it only puts things back on that got deleted, It wont remove all you pictures, passwords etc etc

CoolHotCold

Please Ignore TigerSpan, he is incorrect.

To do a factory restore that deletes everything and puts it back to factory settings hit F11 on startup (or alternativly you can tap F8 then select Repair Computer then select HP Recovery) and choose a destructive recovery.

However this won't delete everything from the hard drive as it only makes the space avaliable to be overwritten, if you want to securely delete everything you need to run the HDD through a program that overwrites all information on the hard drive.

vicx

Tigerspain wrote: »

Just to note the problem with the restore function as others have mentioned is it only puts things back on that got deleted, It wont remove all you pictures, passwords etc etc

There is an option is the restore menu to delete all files that have been saved.

Tigerspain

CoolHotCold wrote: »

Please Ignore TigerSpan, he is incorrect.

To do a factory restore that deletes everything and puts it back to factory settings hit F11 on startup (or alternativly you can tap F8 then select Repair Computer then select HP Recovery) and choose a destructive recovery.

However this won't delete everything from the hard drive as it only makes the space avaliable to be overwritten, if you want to securely delete everything you need to run the HDD through a program that overwrites all information on the hard drive.

I gave a guide to remove EVERYTHING which is what the poster was asking so I dont see how Im incorrect?

vicx

Tigerspain wrote: »

I gave a guide to remove EVERYTHING which is what the poster was asking so I dont see how Im incorrect?

Restoring the laptop by pressing the F11 key at start up removes everything, including files, passwords etc. It then restores it back to factory settings.