Operating System Restore

[Zibl]

Thanks to my wonderful electronic-illiterate mother and father, I recently returned from a 2 trip to the beach to find my computer had been wrecked beyond easy repair. I don't know what they managed to do or how they managed to do it, but without going in to detail, they ruined it. I haven't had to reformat my laptop in over a year and a half, so I couldn't remember exactly how to do it. I was under the impression there was a built in recovery system that was a few easy clicks away. I was apparently wrong. I spent a good 45 minutes looking for ANYTHING that said "Reformat" stamped across it but couldn't find a single thing. I even tried Google searching for help. So I figured there was a recovery CD I needed before I could do anything. After looking all through my desk drawers, the only thing I found was the "Operating System Disk".

 

There were a few options about a system restore to previous dates, but there were only 4 available dates... and the farthest date back was only 2 weeks ago! I tried all 4 of them, but I kept getting some kind of "System Restore failed" message afterward. The only other option on the disk was an "Operating System Restore". Frustrated and out of ideas, I went ahead and did it. I reinstalled the Windows Vista (on the same partition, which was #2 if that matters). When it did this, it said something about creating a 'Windows.old' file after the install and asked if that was alright or not. Long story short: it reinstalled. Here's where my questions come in:

 

Question #1: After the install, my computer literally has NOTHING on it. Other than the usual things of course -- Explorer, Windows Media Player, Solitaire, Minesweeper -- things like that. Is there anything I should be worried about reinstalling? I know the basics like Java and Shockwave and all that good stuff, but normally when I do a reformat there's a lot of other things still on the computer. The out right blankness of programs was kind of a shock :blink: .

 

Question #2: Even though the computer is basically blank, there is only 29 GB out of 60 GB of free space!?!? This is nearly 8 GB lower free space than I had before I did the OS restore! I did some looking around and I'm 99.9% sure it's the 'Windows.old' file that it had asked me about creating at the beginning of the install... because when I right clicked and checked to see how large the 'Windows.old' file was, is was sky rocketing (I eventually just Xed out when it got to about 4.5 GB... but it was still going up when I Xed out). Is this file alright to delete? I don't see why I would need it.

 

Thanks very much in advance. My computer seems to be working fine now. I was just asking because I'm used to the normal reformatting and this re-installation of the operating system is new to me.

[Tim]

Windows old (assuming this is Vista/Win7) is all the data from your previous OS that was installed, a bit like a back up.

 

Your main worry is hunting down drivers for your motherboard, Ethernet drivers, Video, Sound etc etc and re-installing programs.

[Sbrideau]

A format is like deleting everything that's on your hard drive, so you will have to re-install all of the programs you used daily.

 

You can go get your files in the Windows.old though, like images, documents and stuff.

[pure_fett]

in my dealings with win7 it was really good about auto detecting what hardware was hooked up and got all the drivers by itself.

on the other hand i had to manually get drivers when i would reinstall xp.

[Zibl]

Thanks for the replies guys!

 

I've got Windows Vista (yeah yeah, I know... save the lectures lol). I believe it's 32-bit if I'm not mistaken. As far as updating the drivers and all that: is there any easier way to do this? I just assumed anything that would need to be updated would be automatically downloaded through the 'Windows Update' thing for me to install :blink: ?? I'm already getting the "R300 driver has stopper working and recovered successfully" message when I try watching things on Youtube, but like I said before, I assumed all things relating to this would be taken care of after installing some of those 'Windows Update' things.

[pure_fett]

people gave vista so much crap but i never had much issue with it.... something that should be done on every computer is when you get it or add something WRITE DOWN what the computer physically has in it that way you can reference to that later when something like this happens.

 

open your device mangier and click through it and see if it lists everything you have on the computer, if something is missing, go hunting for a CD or try to find your drivers online somewhere

 

gl.

[Zibl]

people gave vista so much crap but i never had much issue with it.... something that should be done on every computer is when you get it or add something WRITE DOWN what the computer physically has in it that way you can reference to that later when something like this happens.

 

open your device mangier and click through it and see if it lists everything you have on the computer, if something is missing, go hunting for a CD or try to find your drivers online somewhere

 

gl.

 

I've never had very many problems, but I've had way more problems with Vista than I ever did XP. I need to just bite the bullet and purchase Windows 7, but I don't want to spend any money for an operating system hen I already have one :lol: . As far as looking through my drivers: everything seems to be there from what I can tell. I just figure everything's out of date. I had 108 'Windows Updates' last night after the re-install and I have another 4 this morning; I'm getting all of those downloaded and hopefully that will pretty much take care of anything.

[Sbrideau]

Is your computer a prebuilt? If it is, use the model number to get the drivers from the manufacturer's website. This way, except for the graphics driver (which you can get on the graphics card maker), you will have up to date drivers for your computer.

 

And I also don't understand why so many people were saying bad things about Vista. I've never had any problems with it and still have a Vista installation on one of my computer. I have Windows 7 on the 2 other computers. One thing that even works better in Vista than 7 is that it doesn't slow down with time. I can run it for months without restarting it, and am only restarting that computer when I have updates, while I have to shut down my Windows 7 computers at least once a week because of slowness. The Vista one is still as fast when I go on it after even a month of the computer being on. Can't say the same with XP though, in which I had way more issues than Vista and 7 combined.

[Zibl]

Thanks very much for all replies. Unfortunately, the laptop went in to uber-effed up mode and wouldn't work at all. I still have no idea how it happened either. One minute I was browsing around the internet, and the next minute there's a brownish/orange screen! I held down the power button for a restart, but once I tried cutting it back on it kept cutting off & powering back on (by itself) over and over again. I had an anti virus program installed right after the re-install so I'm still baffled as to what happened.

 

So what did I do? Bought a new computer! Besides, I've always liked desktops better. I purchased an Acer (without the monitor) that has the 4 GB memory/RAM and 1 TB hard drive. I also purchased a 22" LCD monitor seperately. Needless to say it's a big step from my Gateway Laptop 15" monitor that I purchased in early 2007!

[Guy]

For mass freeware installation, http://ninite.com/ is a very good website where you download an installer which will install your choice of programs. I know it's not specifically what you asked, but it's related :P