Re-format a DELL Studio Laptop

I do like to think of myself as at least somewhat competent with computers however I have run into an issue with trying to format a friends laptop. The usual <f11> at startup does not seem to be running the Dell factory restore tool. Also <ctrl> + <f8> won't bring up the boot menu.

The interesting thing with this laptop is that the <f#> keys are all Fn keys (that is the <f#> part is blue and the media controls seem to be the primary function of the keys). Any ideas on how to get through to be able to restore this laptop to factory 'as-new'?

It is probably something stupidly simple but so far the great powers of google have failed me.

Hopefully that makes the issue clear enough.

Welcome to Windows Seven Forums.

The first thing you need to check is whether your friend's laptop still has the Dell recovery partition on the hard drive.

If it hasn't then you need to use Dell's recovery discs or a Windows DVD.

How To Restore or Reinstall Microsoft Windows on a Dell Computer | Dell

Fn + f8 seems to have done the trick... I am sure I tried that several times already but whatever. Also after going to 'Repair your computer' I had to go to the failsafe data recovery thing even though I did not want to save any data. From there you could choose to save data or not. Slightly confusing but hey I got there in the end and all is right with the world now. Thanks for the help!

You're very welcome.

Pleased to hear you got a result and thanks for the update.