Clean Slate - Wiping a PC

[Rogue_Shadow]

Hello Geek Zone!

My folks have a PC built by PCSpecialist and to be honest I cannot fault it.
However after 4 years, it's beginning to show its age and is starting to grind to a halt, dragging itself through the boot sequence.
It needs wiping something I have no issue doing
The OS (Windows 7) was preinstalled onto the hard drive & I cannot find a built in " restore your PC" program which so many of these prebuilts come with.
I would normally have the OS installed on a separate partition & or have the OS disc to simply wipe it. But this is not the case.

How can I best go about wiping the PC & restoring it back to day 1?
A system restore is a rather lame way of doing it & ideally I want the OS wiped and installed again, not just rolled back.

Any help would be mucho appreciated as always.

[chris-red]

Has it got a licence sticker on the PC with a code on it? If not I can tell you how to find it.

Links here (Scroll down) make sure it is the right version and matches your code.

Download that and either burn it to a DVD or create a bootable USB stick

Once you have your disk/USB Stick make sure it is in the drive/plugged in and reboot your computer.

Depending on the settings it may boot into a mode that will install windows if not your will have to changes these settings in your BIOS.

This involves pressing F2 or Delete (depending on who made your BIOS) when you turn your PC on, navigating (with arrow keys) to the BOOT menu and moving the disk drive/USB stick before the HDD.
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[Rogue_Shadow]

Cheers Chris
I had no idea Microsoft gave out it's OS for free, luckily the product key is still intact under the case.
Thanks

[el_oso]

get an SSD
then re-install
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[Rogue_Shadow]

[chris-red]

[prawny1]

if your version isn't available to download don't worry , just get a copy of the latest service pack media you can then either edit the iso or burn to usb to delete the ei.cfg file.

You will now get a version selection screen when installing windows. (all the install discs contains all the codes for all editions in case you do an anytime upgrade. the coa key will activate both 32 bit and 64bit version (not at the same time obviously) if you plan on upping ram past 4gb.

have yo done a clean up on the pc you know getting rid of dodgy browser extentions and malware, crap like that?

I have to do it occasionally for people, they can't belive how much faster things are when not running all the bundled junk they blind click through when installing stuff.
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hellkat wrote:

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[kawakid]

I work in IT, on on and system like that.

I always find extra memory and a brand new faster bigger hard drive helps with a reload.
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[CaNsA]

[chris-red]