please can you help ds. COMPUTER HELPS NEEDED URGENTLY

[saint2shoes]

(ds posting)

this is 2shoes lovely and wonder full ds asking the world of mumsnet for help.

i have a laptop... that came with windows vista pre-installed (no disk)... now because i've been using it for over a year now it's become overcumberd with useless programs and crap that i don't need and because it is so slow i can't actually uninstall any programs so here is my question... if i were to use system recovery and restore the laptop RIGHT back to the BEGINING would it deleate vista off the harddrive and make me need to buy a vista disk??

P.S. i don't want this to become a Vista V.S. XP argument, i use both i like both i don't want to see "oh oh vista sucks xp rules" or any of that crap can you please just answer the question as best as you can

thank you in advance

love luke :D:D

[saint2shoes]

thanks I will get him to read this.

[onager]

I meant all your personal files will be gone. It puts Windows back as it was then ready to go.

[onager]

A Recovery CD or sometimes a hidden Recovery partition returns every part of the drive back to the original state which seems to be what you want. All of your files will be gone.

'System Restore' is something different and is for other minor stuff.

If you had a CD I'd say run it, but since this will be the hidden partition method you have to find how to access it.

You might find out the method on their site as Tamarto suggests.

Typically it involves pressing a key at startup. Try F8 first as the Recovery option might be added to the menu that comes with safe mode options.

Once you find it then it should be easy as it will lead you through it.

[saint2shoes]

he says that when he tries to uninstall stuff it takes forever, but I will have go at that.

[PenelopePitstops]

have you tried going to control panel, add or remove programmes and get rid of the programmes you don't use

not sure what it does if you chnage it back to the beginning

[Molesworth]

I'm not 100% sure on this but I am 99% sure that restoring to any previous point using the System Restore thing would not remove the operating system. I'm not certain that it'll free up disk space for you either though.

Have you got a lot of large files on your hard drive e.g. mp3s? These could be backed up on to an external hard drive or USB drive to create enough space so that you can uninstall some programs.

Have recently had the same problem with my machine (but I am using XP, which, incidentally, rules )

[Tamarto]

No if i remember right my pc is the same and the operating system is held in a seperate particion.

Did you get it from Dell? If so there is info about it on their site.