With HP systems you should have one or two options for a fresh install. When booting up you may see something to the effect of Press F4 to reinstall OS or something similar. If not, when booting up, press F8 until you get to the DOS looking Menu with several choices. Select Repair My Computer. Once inside the Repair menu there should be the option to reinstall your OS. Select this and it will tell you it is going to erase everything and ask you to verify. This will install the same version that is currently running to a freshly partitioned hard drive. I can not believe someone would sell a system without wiping it clean. Are you sure it is not hot???
Edit: If it is an HP system that is less than 5 years old unless the original hard drive was replaced you will have the reinstall option on boot up that HP provides. You can look up the model number on their web site to find out exactly how to reinstall the OS. As others have said, do not use in it's current state if you do not have to. You never know what might be lurking in the background.
This is ridiculous. Someone somewhere paid for a license for Windows on that machine. Included in the purchase price. So where is it? No wonder MS is sitting on such huge profits. They have no right to complain about piracy when they are the biggest pirate.
And so.... I prefer Linux.
MS created several big software 'industries' that are Windows dependent
A. virus security
B. registry clean up
C. hard disk backup images.
None of these items are expensive necessities in Linux, and maybe not in Apple as well.
And then there are the tedious hard disk defragmentation and security scans that shut you out of productive work for long periods of time.
Do you see why I think it is all 'end game' for MicroSoft. The public has to wise up at some point.
Also, Linux has all the old Unix utilities for free and really searches for files much faster. Excellent Productivity and no need to buy costly add on software.
Do you see why I think it is all 'end game' for MicroSoft. The public has to wise up at some point.
Oh God, I do hope so. It's been taking such a long time.
Oh what?! Seems I have inadvertently agreed with you:)
Strangely enough a friend of mine just had the hard drive go dead on a Fujitsu lap top. Fujitsu Finland replaced the drive under guarantee but it came back with no OS, nothing. After some hassle with Fujitsu we now have a hand made copy on CDR of Windows 7 to install that has come all the way from Fujitsu Germany. Not any kind of official looking CD from MS.
I was amazed they could return the machine from repair under guarantee in a totally non functional state.
A. virus security
B. registry clean up
C. hard disk backup images.
A. virus security... is free from Microsoft
B. registry clean up... using portable apps can avoid most of the problem, and there are free utilities for the stupid.
C. hard disk backup images... wait a minute, you got me here. Linux keeps disk drives from failing? I'm sold.
C. hard disk backup images... wait a minute, you got me here. Linux keeps disk drives from failing? I'm sold.
How do you take a snapshot of your Windows disk partition?
I have no idea now a days but I have seen people using Ghost in the past which I guess is not free.
Under Unix this has been a triviality for decades, a single short command. Hardly worth blowing up into a stand alone application like Ghost.
Anyway, viruses, registries, images, crashes, bla bla are all just technical comparisons.
My main beef with Windows is that I don't want my computing infrastructure dictated to me by a money grabbing corporation, whose reputation for coersion rivals that of the Cray Twins, over which I have no control and is in a foreign country to boot. Even if MS were saints with impeccable behavior and Windows was the ultimately perfect operating system it seems insane to me for the world to become so dependent on a single source of supply for their computing needs.
Fortunately said world is slowly realizing that it need not forever be beholden to a single entity and can stand on it's own two feet.
How do you take a snapshot of your Windows disk partition?
I don't know. You can make a back up image (and put it on a different drive) using System Restore, but I don't know if that can somehow be used to do a bare metal restore. I'm guessing it's possible, but probably has to be done as part of the install process. WHS can do it, but that's a server OS running on a separate computer and you have to install an over-bloated mess of stuff on the client machine.
I have to say that I really dislike Microsoft and their "we know what you need better than you do" attitude and I don't use Windows like most people. On my main computer, Windows has been running since October of last year and I've never activated it. Because of that, I do have to re-install it every few months, but I like to experiment with it so that's not a real problem since it only takes about 15 minutes of my time. Next time I re-install, I'm going to try making a starting image (once everything is set up correctly) and see if I can get that down to just a couple of minutes.
I have Windows 7 running very lean and mean, with less than 30 services (processes) active and nearly zero disk activity when I'm not actually doing anything on the computer. I try not to "install" programs. It is necessary to install some things like video and other drivers, Microsoft garbage, etc. and I play games so Steam is pretty much unavoidable. Other than that the only installed software is VLC media player, True Crypt, Firefox, and Eraser, mostly for the convenience of right clicking to open files and such. Everything else runs as portable from a different disk than the OS. My Steam library is also on a different disk than the OS (with a back up copy on my "server"), so it doesn't ever have to be re-downloaded. That would be a pain since it's over 50GB
How do you take a snapshot of your Windows disk partition?
I have no idea now a days but I have seen people using Ghost in the past which I guess is not free.
Under Unix this has been a triviality for decades, a single short command. Hardly worth blowing up into a stand alone application like Ghost.
Anyway, viruses, registries, images, crashes, bla bla are all just technical comparisons.
My main beef with Windows is that I don't want my computing infrastructure dictated to me by a money grabbing corporation, whose reputation for coersion rivals that of the Cray Twins, over which I have no control and is in a foreign country to boot. Even if MS were saints with impeccable behavior and Windows was the ultimately perfect operating system it seems insane to me for the world to become so dependent on a single source of supply for their computing needs.
Fortunately said world is slowly realizing that it need not forever be beholden to a single entity and can stand on it's own two feet.
My main points are as follow:
A. MS costs money for a ton of things that are FREE, incluidng a very good office suite -- Libre Office
B. MS costs a lot of wasted time for system installation and maintenance that is done more effortlessly in Linux. Or actually unnecesary!
C. Searching for a file in Windows will take a lot longer than a similar search in Unix/Linux OSes (including Apple)
How do you do disk imaging of a Windows partition in Linux. Just use 'dd' for a complete image. It is a Unix legacy comand. And if you want the copy to go to another computer on the same network, you can use 'rsync' or 'dd' withing 'ssh' - depending on your desire for security versus speed.
MicroSoft survives because the average computer user 'doesn't want to learn', they are more than willing to pay and feel a bit helpless and stupid.
AND CONSIDER THIS,
Even if you never ever want to install Linux on your computer, a Linux LiveCD or USBmemory stick boot can still do perfect images of your Windows computer's hard disk and store them on a remote hard disk. And this is completely FREE software as well.
Knowledge is power, and Windows is for the dumb and powerless user at this point. Linux even has friendly humans that help with your problems, not the MS way --
A. Ask a friend
B. Hire an expert
C. Don't call us unless you have very deep pockets.
I did some checking and the built-in System Restore that is part of Windows 7 can create a disk image on an internal or external drive, or to a network drive. It looks like it offers a fairly good amount of control over exactly what is and is not backed up. It also can make a recovery disk which you would boot from in order to perform the restore (so I guess you wouldn't need the install disk) and should work even if the HDD has to be replaced. Not sure what happens with "activation", I don't think a disk drive replacement alone will trigger a reactivation. Since I'm not activating, that doesn't matter too much.
Loopy,
Not sure what Office software has to do with any of this. Personally, I rarely have to do any "maintenance" and almost never have to search for a file because I know exactly where they all are - at least the ones I care about anyway.
I have five computers with five different operating systems. Only one is Windows 7 and only one is Linux. I only use Win 7 for playing games and movies. Linux is not all that great for games but Valve has been working on improving that.
And then there are the tedious hard disk defragmentation and security scans that shut you out of productive work for long periods of time.
A variant of that I see often (well, among colleagues and customers - I use other tech) is when you're just finishing the meeting and you switch off the Windows laptop so that you can rush out to the taxi waiting to drive you to the airport.. and Windows tells you to 'not shut off' the computer! Some upgrade thingy completely outside of your control. And this being business computers the battery isn't able to keep the machine off mains anymore (as they're basically on mains 99% of the time), and besides to let it run while moving kills the harddrive (sooner or later).
What does Office have to do with Windows versus Linux.
I have two machines with Windows 7 Start on them -- netbooks that both cost under $300 USD.
In order to use the Windows properly, I would need the following.
A. Upgrade to Windows 7 Professional -- $199.00 :USD for an upgrade DVD
B. A Windows Office Suite -- $399 USD for Office Professional
C. A copy of Ghost or other disk imagine software. -- $11 USD
D. Antivirus add on -- another annual fee.
Being in Taiwan, I cannot purchase the lower priced deals that are available to North Americans,. but the $300 USD computer requires $600 USD in software.. at least.
I avoid all this by using Linux and Libre Office. (Sure I could you Home and Student Office for $219, but the people that want me to be MS Office compatible want ALL the features for document editing and collaboration)
~~~~~~~
Even my Windows 7 Starter is a constant nag about maintenance with paranoid messages about failure if I don't provide immediate attention. I keep the Windows 7 Starter in a dual boot arrangement, but almost never use it.
And I am blissfully free of cyber-attacks, have been for years now. Windows is the hacker's choice and Asia is a internet cesspool.
In the past I have paid out good money and lots of it for a properly licensed version of XP and Windows Office Professional and protection, only to have it fail in proper protection and have to be recovered at a huge waste of time.
If Linux suffers an OS failure, I reload and am back to running in about 20 minutes. I don't have to dig for DVDS and various software licenses and registrations to load all these items individually.
A variant of that I see often (well, among colleagues and customers - I use other tech) is when you're just finishing the meeting and you switch off the Windows laptop so that you can rush out to the taxi waiting to drive you to the airport.. and Windows tells you to 'not shut off' the computer! Some upgrade thingy completely outside of your control. And this being business computers the battery isn't able to keep the machine off mains anymore (as they're basically on mains 99% of the time), and besides to let it run while moving kills the harddrive (sooner or later).
-Tor
That 'don't shut off your computer' message has likely been the reason I was prescribed high blood pressure medicine. I would shut down the netbook because the battery is running low, only to find that MS is saying ... "No, no, no... you have to wait...."
Microsoft Ergonomics? No such thing. Just idiotic WOW factors.
BTW, I have XP, Vista, and Windows 7 on various machines... but all are dual boot with Linux now.
To the savy user, Linux is like 'fine wine', while Windows is ' a cheap twist-top wine with a pretty label".
Well I think I have it solved. I went to a Computer Tutor here in town to have him look it over. He went into Internet options and under the Advanced tab clicked on "Reset" to reset Internet Explorer Settings. That got rid of other users settings etc. He found no other issues with this laptop and said it is a "clean" install. We'll see how it goes.
Don, I'm glad you found a solution. I had an HP laptop and upgraded from Vista Home Premium to Vista Pro. When I did that I lost all the boot up options to restore to factory defaults.
One thing I hate is most computers now only let you make ONE copy of your System Restore disks. I usually make it then use Img Burn to make multiple copies in case I lose the originals.
I have a love/hate relationship with MS. Most of my career I've spent programming in MS software so I owe my livelihood to them in a indirect way. It ends there though since I don't believe MS has created one original thing. MS is the "Borg" of software companies. Resistance is futile, you will be assimilated (or bought out). If MS can do it a 3rd party company can do it better and usually cheaper or free.
I personally have had it with MS telling me what to do so I'm doing a slow migration to Linux. Right now I have Linux Mint 15 booting off a external USB HD, The next step once I'm comfortable with it is to dual boot it. And once I have completely severed my dependence to MS I'll just have Linux on my laptop.
...so I owe my livelihood to them [MS] in a indirect way.
No, they owe you your life back. They will never pay up so better to cut the cord now. You are a bit late, it's been MS free here since 1996, but it's no to late to be un-assimilated.
Well after some further review what I discovered is that it was a laptop that someone got by signing up for online college courses. The college installs some sort of "tracking" program from absolute.com that is like a "lojack" for laptops. I think the program is rpcnet.exe and rpcnetp.exe & .dll. It's some sort of remote process call.
Well long story short- I got my money back. I called the 800 number that would pop up on the screen and the college said that they can remotely "brick" the computer if it is not paid for by the student. Now they may have paid for it I don't know but I bought it second handed not from the student. And the "student" is the only one that can have this laptop released from that software.
Wow now that is too much big brother for me. Wanted nothing to do with it so fortunately I got my money back.
I looked around the net and it seems there is no way around this program maybe other than installing Linux on it. Too bad it was a nice sized laptop and just what I was looking for.
Comments
Edit: If it is an HP system that is less than 5 years old unless the original hard drive was replaced you will have the reinstall option on boot up that HP provides. You can look up the model number on their web site to find out exactly how to reinstall the OS. As others have said, do not use in it's current state if you do not have to. You never know what might be lurking in the background.
And so.... I prefer Linux.
MS created several big software 'industries' that are Windows dependent
A. virus security
B. registry clean up
C. hard disk backup images.
None of these items are expensive necessities in Linux, and maybe not in Apple as well.
And then there are the tedious hard disk defragmentation and security scans that shut you out of productive work for long periods of time.
Do you see why I think it is all 'end game' for MicroSoft. The public has to wise up at some point.
Also, Linux has all the old Unix utilities for free and really searches for files much faster. Excellent Productivity and no need to buy costly add on software.
Oh what?! Seems I have inadvertently agreed with you:)
Strangely enough a friend of mine just had the hard drive go dead on a Fujitsu lap top. Fujitsu Finland replaced the drive under guarantee but it came back with no OS, nothing. After some hassle with Fujitsu we now have a hand made copy on CDR of Windows 7 to install that has come all the way from Fujitsu Germany. Not any kind of official looking CD from MS.
I was amazed they could return the machine from repair under guarantee in a totally non functional state.
A. virus security... is free from Microsoft
B. registry clean up... using portable apps can avoid most of the problem, and there are free utilities for the stupid.
C. hard disk backup images... wait a minute, you got me here. Linux keeps disk drives from failing? I'm sold.
I have no idea now a days but I have seen people using Ghost in the past which I guess is not free.
Under Unix this has been a triviality for decades, a single short command. Hardly worth blowing up into a stand alone application like Ghost.
Anyway, viruses, registries, images, crashes, bla bla are all just technical comparisons.
My main beef with Windows is that I don't want my computing infrastructure dictated to me by a money grabbing corporation, whose reputation for coersion rivals that of the Cray Twins, over which I have no control and is in a foreign country to boot. Even if MS were saints with impeccable behavior and Windows was the ultimately perfect operating system it seems insane to me for the world to become so dependent on a single source of supply for their computing needs.
Fortunately said world is slowly realizing that it need not forever be beholden to a single entity and can stand on it's own two feet.
I have to say that I really dislike Microsoft and their "we know what you need better than you do" attitude and I don't use Windows like most people. On my main computer, Windows has been running since October of last year and I've never activated it. Because of that, I do have to re-install it every few months, but I like to experiment with it so that's not a real problem since it only takes about 15 minutes of my time. Next time I re-install, I'm going to try making a starting image (once everything is set up correctly) and see if I can get that down to just a couple of minutes.
I have Windows 7 running very lean and mean, with less than 30 services (processes) active and nearly zero disk activity when I'm not actually doing anything on the computer. I try not to "install" programs. It is necessary to install some things like video and other drivers, Microsoft garbage, etc. and I play games so Steam is pretty much unavoidable. Other than that the only installed software is VLC media player, True Crypt, Firefox, and Eraser, mostly for the convenience of right clicking to open files and such. Everything else runs as portable from a different disk than the OS. My Steam library is also on a different disk than the OS (with a back up copy on my "server"), so it doesn't ever have to be re-downloaded. That would be a pain since it's over 50GB
My main points are as follow:
A. MS costs money for a ton of things that are FREE, incluidng a very good office suite -- Libre Office
B. MS costs a lot of wasted time for system installation and maintenance that is done more effortlessly in Linux. Or actually unnecesary!
C. Searching for a file in Windows will take a lot longer than a similar search in Unix/Linux OSes (including Apple)
How do you do disk imaging of a Windows partition in Linux. Just use 'dd' for a complete image. It is a Unix legacy comand. And if you want the copy to go to another computer on the same network, you can use 'rsync' or 'dd' withing 'ssh' - depending on your desire for security versus speed.
MicroSoft survives because the average computer user 'doesn't want to learn', they are more than willing to pay and feel a bit helpless and stupid.
AND CONSIDER THIS,
Even if you never ever want to install Linux on your computer, a Linux LiveCD or USBmemory stick boot can still do perfect images of your Windows computer's hard disk and store them on a remote hard disk. And this is completely FREE software as well.
Knowledge is power, and Windows is for the dumb and powerless user at this point. Linux even has friendly humans that help with your problems, not the MS way --
A. Ask a friend
B. Hire an expert
C. Don't call us unless you have very deep pockets.
Loopy,
Not sure what Office software has to do with any of this. Personally, I rarely have to do any "maintenance" and almost never have to search for a file because I know exactly where they all are - at least the ones I care about anyway.
I have five computers with five different operating systems. Only one is Windows 7 and only one is Linux. I only use Win 7 for playing games and movies. Linux is not all that great for games but Valve has been working on improving that.
-Tor
I have two machines with Windows 7 Start on them -- netbooks that both cost under $300 USD.
In order to use the Windows properly, I would need the following.
A. Upgrade to Windows 7 Professional -- $199.00 :USD for an upgrade DVD
B. A Windows Office Suite -- $399 USD for Office Professional
C. A copy of Ghost or other disk imagine software. -- $11 USD
D. Antivirus add on -- another annual fee.
Being in Taiwan, I cannot purchase the lower priced deals that are available to North Americans,. but the $300 USD computer requires $600 USD in software.. at least.
I avoid all this by using Linux and Libre Office. (Sure I could you Home and Student Office for $219, but the people that want me to be MS Office compatible want ALL the features for document editing and collaboration)
~~~~~~~
Even my Windows 7 Starter is a constant nag about maintenance with paranoid messages about failure if I don't provide immediate attention. I keep the Windows 7 Starter in a dual boot arrangement, but almost never use it.
And I am blissfully free of cyber-attacks, have been for years now. Windows is the hacker's choice and Asia is a internet cesspool.
In the past I have paid out good money and lots of it for a properly licensed version of XP and Windows Office Professional and protection, only to have it fail in proper protection and have to be recovered at a huge waste of time.
If Linux suffers an OS failure, I reload and am back to running in about 20 minutes. I don't have to dig for DVDS and various software licenses and registrations to load all these items individually.
That 'don't shut off your computer' message has likely been the reason I was prescribed high blood pressure medicine. I would shut down the netbook because the battery is running low, only to find that MS is saying ... "No, no, no... you have to wait...."
Microsoft Ergonomics? No such thing. Just idiotic WOW factors.
BTW, I have XP, Vista, and Windows 7 on various machines... but all are dual boot with Linux now.
To the savy user, Linux is like 'fine wine', while Windows is ' a cheap twist-top wine with a pretty label".
One thing I hate is most computers now only let you make ONE copy of your System Restore disks. I usually make it then use Img Burn to make multiple copies in case I lose the originals.
I have a love/hate relationship with MS. Most of my career I've spent programming in MS software so I owe my livelihood to them in a indirect way. It ends there though since I don't believe MS has created one original thing. MS is the "Borg" of software companies. Resistance is futile, you will be assimilated (or bought out). If MS can do it a 3rd party company can do it better and usually cheaper or free.
I personally have had it with MS telling me what to do so I'm doing a slow migration to Linux. Right now I have Linux Mint 15 booting off a external USB HD, The next step once I'm comfortable with it is to dual boot it. And once I have completely severed my dependence to MS I'll just have Linux on my laptop.
Well long story short- I got my money back. I called the 800 number that would pop up on the screen and the college said that they can remotely "brick" the computer if it is not paid for by the student. Now they may have paid for it I don't know but I bought it second handed not from the student. And the "student" is the only one that can have this laptop released from that software.
Wow now that is too much big brother for me. Wanted nothing to do with it so fortunately I got my money back.
I looked around the net and it seems there is no way around this program maybe other than installing Linux on it. Too bad it was a nice sized laptop and just what I was looking for.
Lesson learned here....