Strange one involves alpha pc, windows 9?? And restoring a dell laptop

[Happyhenky]

Hi all,

I wasn't sure where to post this but seeing as the point I have reached is trying to restore a laptop I thought I would do here.
Get your teeth into this one. I will try to break it all down so you get the facts up to where I am now. I am "fairly ok" ok on a pc and trying to help.

It involves my girlfriends dads laptop. He received a call from alpha pc care partners of Microsoft saying he had corruption. Quick search shows tonnes of scams but he paid for £110 install. They dialled into or equivalent onto his pc and 'worked' for 3 hours. He watched and saw nothing untoward. All ok and months later can't get onto Internet. Eventually called dell (he has a dell Inspiron n5050) they said mcafe had done an update and there were problems stopping people get online. The dell person dialled in after disabling mcafe and 'worked' on it for an hour and he could then go online.

The next day he went to turn on pc and said when he pressed on it booted in a second as though it had never been off. It showed the log in screen where it said WINDOWS 9. Both him and his wife said this and we're adamant as they had heard that upgrading windows was not worth it and wondered how it happened. Upon logging in it said "rearranging your desktop" and they had search bars at the top of the screen. All their files had gone. No pictures. No favourites. No files. They didn't like it and as both felt unsure after the alpha care situation turned it off. When they turned back on it was back to windows 7 and all files were back. They have since changed passwords to things incase.

I am being told this over dinner and as both of them are concerned I did some digging. What concerns me the most is the windows 9 thing. I can't find any other topics, sites or info on windows 9 and they are so sure that all I can think is it's something untoward to do with alpha care???

Well where it has led me to seeing as they are both concerned and no matter what, if something weird happens online now all they think is it's to do its alpha care. So I said if they restore it to factory default then it will remove all traces of ANYTHING and put their minds at ease.

Problem is they don't have a resort disc supplied with the laptop. It was bought officially in march 2012. The reason I have posted so much is I am intrigued by the windows 9 thing and alpha care pc and your opinions. But please as well if you can direct me in the most efficient way of restoring their pc that would be great. Ideally in a way where I can do it over the next 2 days whilst I am here without having to order a disc. I do have a disc for dell but it's drivers and utilities not a restore point.

Thanks for reading. I hope enough info is here. I know he shouldn't have entertained the call but he did and I know windows 9 sounds strange but this is what I am being told.

Thanks.

Daniel.

 

[Skylais]

If it was bought in march 2012, it should have a partition possibly hidden from them that contains the factory restore data. Most newer pc's do not use win7 discs anymore and all of that needed stuff, is stored on a separate part or partition on the hdd. You can usually access it by tapping f8 on boot up, which will then bring up the advanced options menu. From here if the windows 7 data is stored on a partition in which it should if a disc was not presented with, you will see "repair your computer" from there see if there is a factory reset of some sort. The windows 9 stuff is trippy
Also if tapping f8 does not work, try holding it instead.

EDIT:
On top of that here is a link provided by dell, on how to restore your pc to factory defualts just in case if my method is not compatible with Dell.
http://support.dell.com/support/top...=19&l=en&s=dhs&docid=DSN_362066&isLegacy=true

Also please mark as solved if this fixes your problem

 

[gregrocker]

As suggested try restoring the Dell to Factory Conditions following these steps: Dell Restoring Your Computer´s Software to the Factory Settings

If that fails then everything needed to get a perfect Clean Reinstall of Win7 including the installer and tool to burn to DVD or write to flash stick is here: Clean Reinstall - Factory OEM Windows 7. Read the Special Notes to Dell owners at end.
http://www.sevenforums.com/tutorials/219487-clean-reinstall-factory-oem-windows-7-a.html#post1839164

 

[Happyhenky]

Fantastic. All restored and ok. Cheers. Not sure how to mark as complete from iPad app.

 

[Skylais]

Fantastic. All restored and ok. Cheers. Not sure how to mark as complete from iPad app.

Great!
If you need any other assistance i am sure any one of us would be glad to help.
Also i just checked the ios app to see if it is possible to mark a thread solved through it, and i couldn't find a way either. You could open it up in Safari or whatever web browser and do it through there, but in general don't worry about it. As long as the issue was solved all is well. Enjoy life, and goodbye

 

[gregrocker]

If you ran Recovery you might want to Clean Up Factory Bloatware