System Recovery

darkdisturbed · 27 Dec 2010

Okay I think my laptop is due to be re-formatted back to the default system settings/recovery of Windows Vista Basic. Although I love Windows 7, I am definetly not happy with the performance of it in the last couple months and do miss the ease and feel of Vista and would like to re-start from scratch.

Question is - Once I've backed everything up onto my hdd (personal documents, pictures and mp3s) , do I need to create a recovery disk? Or since there is a recovery partition with my laptop, I can do the restore the factory settings through the Recovery Manager when I press the F11 key upon boot up?

Obviously I have a lot of documents to back up, so I'm hoping by new years eve I can begin the restore the factory settings.

So because I have the recovery partition on my laptop, I can do the recovery to the original system operating system and settings through that upon boot up via F11?

My laptop is a COMPAQ PRESARIO CQ60.

ignatzatsonic · 27 Dec 2010

Have you done the F11 thing to examine the menus and go a few steps into the process, but not all the way?

But, I think you have it right.

I can't say how well it will work.

You will probably have a lot of people tell you to stick it out with Windows 7. Your system specs look plenty good enough for it.

What kind of performance issues are you having? If you didn't ALWAYS have them, it may be correctable.

darkdisturbed · 27 Dec 2010

Not talking about my pc. Talking about my laptop [quote
My laptop is a COMPAQ PRESARIO CQ60.[/quote]

Sorry should have been specific enough. :)

I know I did make recovery discs, when just after I upgraded to vista Home Premium, but don't think they'll work now as I haven't used them at all and plus I got Windows 7.

I think I have some miscellaneous software on there that's stuffed up some of my appearances. I mean everything seems to be in italics , and it has nothing to do with the personalization features, I did a system restore, and everything seems to be in italics except for the web sites themselves.

ignatzatsonic · 27 Dec 2010

Look here:

HP Notebook PCs - Recover Windows Vista Operating System Using HP Recovery - c00809678 - HP Business Support Center

Looks to me like all you need is F11, assuming that recovery partition is still there and you can get to it.

If you cannot get to that partition or F11 does not work, you would have to rely on recovery disks.

But I don't think the disks are needed if you can access the partition.

If you did make the disks, they should still work, even though you have Windows 7 now.

darkdisturbed · 27 Dec 2010

I can access the partition. I never touched that. :) Left it as it was, although my uncle said to get rid of it. Glad I never listened to him. Thanks for your helps guys. :)

TVeblen · 27 Dec 2010

darkdisturbed said:

I mean everything seems to be in italics , and it has nothing to do with the personalization features, I did a system restore, and everything seems to be in italics except for the web sites themselves.

This condition happens when the fonts file has been deleted or damaged.

Lets say your default font is Arial. When the standard arial font becomes unavailable the system will switch to the Arial Italic font.

People solve this condition by reinstalling the missing font. If you can determine which font is missing you can copy it from another computer and paste it into yours. Open up c:\windows\fonts on any PC that doesn't have the problem, copy the Arial standard file Arial.ttf (or other missing font) onto an USB stick and then copy the file into the c:\windows\fonts folder of your PC (PC = Personal Computer, and includes laptops).

Or you can run System File Checker, which will reinstall any missing fonts that came with Windows.

gregrocker · 27 Dec 2010

HP's and especially Compaq's come loaded with factory bloatware which slows down Win7 from being the feather light instantaneous OS it is.

Many tech enthusiasts get around this by finding a clean-copy Win7 installation DVD for their version to clean reinstall without the bloatware and useless factory utilities which have better versions built into Win7. You are entitled by MS to have a clean copy of the version of Win7 you own using the Product Key on the COA sticker.

Here are suggested steps to look over to consider this as an option: re-install windows 7

Until then if you Factory Recover, here are some tips to tame the bloatware some: HP laptop has used up all four primary partitions

darkdisturbed · 05 Jan 2011

Just an update - decided not to go ahead with the format because I've solved a number of the problems. :)

Less bloated now, and I did a system restore - which re-installed the font that was missing when everything was in italics :)

Just to work through more issues.

Thanks for that information page by the way, very useful :)