Reformat and fresh reinstall of Windows 7

[Mason240]

I know this question must be asked quite often, but I want to be be confident before I reformat my machine.

I have a Lenovo ideaCenter K300 I bought in May. I want to reformat and reinstall in order to get a "factory-fresh" install of W7.

So far I have tried building a system repair disc. Other tutorials [here] said it would take 7 CDs, this only took one so I'm not sure I did the right thing. I restarted and ran the disc, it only looks to be a bunch of repair utilities.

Can anyone point me in the right direction? Thanks!

 

[theog]

   Information

We always assume you have made your Recovery Disks using the OEM manufacturer's app the first day you had your new PC.
& made the Startup Repair CD.
startup repair disc-create
​

Do you make OEM Recovery Disk?

You can Order Lenovo Recovery Disks from here:
Lenovo Support - Home (US)

Lenovo Recovery
Lenovo Support - Home (US)

 

[Bill2]

First of all, you cant be Factory AND Fresh. Factory will take you back to all the bloatware, fresh will give you a nice, clean system with just the apps and drivers you want. So please make up your mind.

System repair disk is DIFFERENT from a recovery disk. System repair disks are just around 150 mb in size, they contain only the recovery utilities required to repair things should something go wrong. The one that takes 7 CDs or 6 or 5 is the recovery disk set which will restore the computer to factory state i.e. what it was when you unboxed it.

 

[Bare Foot Kid]

Hello Mason.


Have a look through the information in this tutorial at the link below for some additional ideas and be sure to post back with any further questions you may have and to keep us informed.

Clean Install : Factory COA Activation Key

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[Mason240]

First of all, you cant be Factory AND Fresh. Factory will take you back to all the bloatware, fresh will give you a nice, clean system with just the apps and drivers you want. So please make up your mind.

System repair disk is DIFFERENT from a recovery disk. System repair disks are just around 150 mb in size, they contain only the recovery utilities required to repair things should something go wrong. The one that takes 7 CDs or 6 or 5 is the recovery disk set which will restore the computer to factory state i.e. what it was when you unboxed it.

Yes, I mean fresh. The first thing I would do it remove all the extraneous crap I can find.

Most of the tutorials I have found use "repair" and "recovery" interchangeably, hence my confusion.

 

[Bill2]

OK. Backup all your data to external media and make a set of recovery disks first. Then locate (borrow or download, dont ask here) a win7 disk, install the same edition that came preinstalled, then activate with the sticker key. After that go to Lenovo's website, download all the drivers for your model and install. Install all your apps, tweak whatever you want. Then create an image using either the builtin backup/restore or a 3rd party tool like macrium reflect free.

 

[Mason240]

They certainly don't make it easy like was for XP.

Thanks everyone. I am looking through Bare Foot Kid's tutorial now.