Restoring Windows 8 To Factory State Without Deleting Secondary Drive
Aug 13, 2014
I have a 3-months old Dell laptop, which I need to do a factory reset for, using the recovery partition.
Since I don't have an external hdd available, in order to backup everything I needed (roughly 95 GB), I shrunk my C drive by 100 gig and created a secondary partition, and just moved my files there.
Now, if I remember correctly, unlike windows disc-installation, it will not let me choose which drive to format and install the new OS on, it'll just delete everything and restore it to the state it was in when I first got it.
Since both drives are on the same HDD, will it actually be deleted? (the secondary drive). If yes, what can I do to "tell it" not to touch that drive?
I have an acer laptop that came installed with windows 8, and now i want to restore to factory default but i dont want to re download any of my files(over 100gb). Is there anything i can do to restore but still keep my files intact?
I had a problem with my laptop, which its model is dell inspiron 5537 15r 1tera 6GB ram ,windows 8 original .
I have gave it to a technician who told me that the hard needed to be changed from gpt to rbn or something like that am not sure because of this process hard have been formatted.
how could i restore my lap top to factory status ?
or getting my original product key for my original windows 8 that was installed on my laptop .
In few days I will have my new computer with Windows 8.1, and I wonder what solution would be the best for easy backing up and restoring of system drive in the new machine. For last 5 years I've been using Acronis to create an image of entire partition c: , with windows and all my crucial software, and if only my system felt slow or there was too many stuff installed, I simply restored it from this image (of course app data was moved to d:, so that no settings of my programs were replaced). From time to time I was making new image, so that it was always ready to work 'out of the box' with all the updates etc..
Any different solution to accomplish the same as I don't want to move app data to d: any more because I'll have ssd drive for my system, and I would prefer to have it all in one partition, so my solution will no longer be effective. Is there any native Windows 8 solution for system backup and is it any good? Or maybe I could simply backup "windows" and "program files" folders, and restore just them. Would it be as effective as restoring entire partition?
XBMC (my htpc software) can not write changes to secondary drive as when I turn off Read-Only it automatically turns back on again.
I can give further information but i didn't want to swap you guys with details unless they are needed, but just in case it is a windows 8 machine running as a HTPC and connected to a windows 2012 server domain.
I have a secomdary drive with all of my games and it is at 100% usage even though read and write speeds are at 0 each. I will put a few pictures in here.
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I have a laptop that i set up with an image that loads Win8X64 UEFI Secure. If this hard drive crashes at all, will i get a chance to hook it up to as an external hard drive to another computer to pull off user files as back up?
I tried to do this scenario before i start deploying uefi secure images for my company but it wouldn't show data. I can see the drive however in devices but it won't give it a drive letter and i can't access it.
Is there a resolution to this problem that i can troubleshoot just in case i run into it in the future.
I have a question. One related to hard drives, multiple windows os', and BIOS.
I have save data on my old hard drive (disk) that I need to retrieve that is in the Windows7 "My documents recognized by Windows 8.1 (Windows 8.1 is on my new SSD).
I am concerned that my plan to retrieve my data might cause an error in the bootloader if I perform this method
Reboot in Windows 8.1 When the computer gets to the BIOS splash screen, press F11 (boot options) Select old harddrive (disk drive with Windows 7) to boot into This will boot in Windows 7 Home Premium which is located on the disk drive Log in and go into file explorer retrieve data from documents menu copy/paste data from Disk Drive to new folder in SSD Reboot in Windows 7 When the computer gets to the BIOS splash screen, press F11 (boot options) Select SSD (with Windows 8.1) Move data to documents folder
(If computer auto reboots from SSD then skip steps 9 and 10)
My old Sony Vaio broke the other day, so I've just got a new laptop. The Vaio was Vista, but now I'm on Windows 8.
I'd been backing up my Vaio to an external harddrive, but all I ever did was run the backup and let it get on with it. So for example, within the external harddrive now it just has a list of the dates I ran a backup, followed by 'Backup files 1', 'Backup files 2' etc. I'm hoping these include some of the documents/files I had on there, but I can't be sure. What exactly will have been backed up here?
I've been trying now to restore these files on my new laptop, but I can't seem to find a way. Is it possible?
A couple of months ago I built a new system and made the jump to Windows 8.
Everything runs great apart from one thing - my secondary hard drive (which is the old one from my old rig) is having issues, which I am now only using for all my less-important programs, and movies, games and general files.
Whenever I open up the drive in Computer or Explorer, it will lock up the window/freeze for 10-20 seconds before returning to normal, in which I can then use it again. It will work for normally for around 5-10 minutes before the lockup returns.
I have the hard drive split into two partitions. Both do the same thing.
I take a File History snapshot every night. I have had to do a restore of my c: drive and need to apply my File History for four days. How to do this because I have never done it before.
Basically at the moment i am using Windows 7 Home and will be upgrading to Windows 8.1 in about a weeks time. I currently have Windows 7 installed on a 60Gb SSD and i have a secondary 500Gb Seagate Barracuda for other files. What i am wondering is if i clean install Windows 8 onto the SSD only will i still be able to use the 2nd drive in Windows 8? Basically this drive has a fair amount of music / videos etc and i would like to make to make sure i can use these. I would like to do a clean install and not an upgrade btw.
As I am nearing the limits of my C drive, I have been purging applications and moving them to a secondary D drive. One of the uninstalled apps, Microsoft Visual Studio 2012 Pro, opened up space on my drive, but also left about 29 uninstalled programs (and I assume, many unnecessary folders). According to a couple of Google searches, uninstalling these programs, even if done in the correct order, could cause some problems down the line. However, I do want to install this program on my D drive. Would installing visual studio on my d drive cause any problems (as there are 29 programs related to visual studio on the C drive)? I am running windows 8.1 on a Gigabyte p34g.
I have a hard drive connected to a hard drive caddy, and am using it as an external hard drive: and it contains various audio/text/video files, and these were added to the hard drive when I was using windows xp
Now, however I find some of these files are "locked" onto the hard drive - I cant move them anywhere else. If I try to do this I get the message that I don't have administrative privileges to do so I have tried disabling uac but it situation still the same.
My Pc has only one user account (mine) and I am of course, the administrator accordingly. because I installed windows 8 myself with just me as only user.
I am thinking of installing a new hard drive to my Dell XPS 8500 (replacing the one that came with my system).
I have made DVD's that will install the factory image using Dell backup. If I install a new hard drive can I use these DVD's to install Windows 8 (the factory image) to my new hard drive?
My SSD (Intel 60GB) was becoming too small to hold my Windows 8 system partition so I found another use for that SSD and went back to HDD. I transferred whole SSD to HDD with Paragon Backup & Recovery 2013 free, and now the system gladly boots from HDD.
But Windows 8 is somehow still thinking that they are running on SSD. For example "Optimize Drives" (Ex Windows Defragmenter) shows "Solid State Drive" as media type and probably because it can't access TRIM functions, it is unable to defragment the drive, so it is yelling that "Optimization is not available":
How do I convince Windows 8 that they are running from HDD again?
I have tried to remove this disk from "Disk Drives" in Device Manager, also I removed/reinstalled everything under "IDE ATA/ATAPI Controllers" and "Storage controllers" without any success.
I just bought a Seagate ST750LX003 Momentus XT 750 GB as the new primary drive for my gaming laptop, and I'm wondering how to defrag them, and whether it is safe. I wanted the best of both worlds (space and speed) so I went for the middle ground. What is the difference between a regular HDD, SSHD, and a SSD? Do I just let Windows perform its' normal defrag routine as I normally would, or do I need to download some kind of proprietary software from Seagate that will do it? I like to use 3rd party software (UltimateDefrag) for my defrag operations, is all. And how much can I fill it up before it starts to slow down? I ask because I've heard that you cant fill an SSD up past around 50 to 60% or so before it slowly starts to degrade, since it needs room to perform its' TRIM (defrag) operations. Is this also true of SSHDs?
I am trying to get my external hard drives setup from a freshly rebooted installed computer. I recently placed an external hard drive with all my back up files on my computer, but this drive is not going to be my main drive. I have two others I will be using as a main hdd and a backup drive that are brand new.
So, the question is, if I were to use a utility like the Windows 8.1 disk management feature to either delete the drive letter or even change it to another one, will that mess up the external hard drive or even lose data? Because until I transfer my files to my backup disk I am afraid of losing my only copy of my files.
I currently run Win 7/Ubuntu 12.10 dual boot. Win 7 is installed, obviously, on my C: Drive and Ubuntu is installed on my D: Drive (Both are 500GB HDD's. Drive D: also is where I Store my photos, movies, document, music, etc)).
I'm going to do a clean install of Win 8 on my C: Drive, but how will I be able to access my Ubuntu install after I get Win 8 all set up?
I recently received a second monitor for the use of a secondary monitor, but it has a VGA port and no DVI port. This was an issue because my graphics card (NVIDIA GeForce GTX 760) does not have a VGA port.
I purchased a DVI-D to VGA adapter (turns out it was a 5-pack) and it is not detecting it.
I installed Windows on my friends MacBook Air using Bootcamp a few months ago. At that time I made a Windows Image to an external hard drive, not really sure if it was even feasible to restore it. How to do a restore in a situation like this, or if it is possible?
I bought a sumsung Ativ smart pc about a year ago, recently had to take it in for repairs (still under warranty), before taking it in I used the "windows 7 recovery" system (despite being in windows 8) to create a system image, I then reset my computer to factory settings
Have the image on a USB drive, just got the computer back, however I cannot restore my computer. Not sure why but whenever I select the restore option it wont let me pick a local folder or usb drive as the location of the backup image, it seems to be looking exclusively for networked drives/machines
I've read I may need a restore cd to get this working, however my tablet only has 1 usb drive and no disk drive, what should I do?
I have a second partition that I would like to install windoiws 7 pro on, but am not sure how to go about it, and once I do install it, how do I boot to it?
So, my questions are- How do I install Windows 7 on this second partition how do I boot to it
I know on my mac with boot camp I just hit the alt button and I have the choice of which OS to run.
I recently received a restore usb for windows 8 from dell and had some trouble.
When I tried to repair the operating system with the usb restore, this it what happened.
I was given the following options- off the USB restore
1-refresh 2- system restore 3- repair 4- Re-install windows 8
After trying to 1-3 first to repair the OS, all denied being able to fix.Sometimes I would get these messages-
1-Volume Locked.
2-A required drive partition is missing.
3- windowssystem32winload.efi is missing or corrupt.
After I re-installed windows 8, I see the following partitions.
1- c: re-install windows 8 - 404gig of 418gig(currently done)
2- d: corrupt windows 8 , but all the system files are still there 45 gig of which 38 gig is used by the previous corrupt OS ( but all the files are still there).
My question is , is there any way to fix or restore the corrupt previous OS ?
The reason I want try restore previous OS is because I had activated windows , had all the dell drivers installed and had the antivirus, installed.should I try to rename C:- D and D:- C to see what happens ?
I just bought ARMA 3 and believe it or not, the brand new DVD I received has a corrupt file on it. I brought it from ebay so I would like to try and repair it before sending it back.
I am 100% sure it is the disc as my DVD drive is working fine, every other DVD I put in works flawlessly. Installing the game fails at around 50% and burning the DVD to an ISO also fails at 50%. Other games install/burn fine.
I tried copying the files to my hard drive and found that the damaged file is '107411_depotcache_5.csd' which is about 1GB in size (every other file copies without issues).
My question is, can I somehow repair the corrupt file?
I have two desktop PCs, both of which are 5-7 year old Intel Core 2 Duo-based with 2-4GB of RAM.
I performed a clean install of Win 8.1 Pro onto the first partition on a freshly cleaned disk and all went well. Booted up and ran MS Update to get the whole system up to date. Then installed all of my apps. Then I used Acronis TrueImage to create an image backup of the Windows/App partition.
Then rather than going through the entire process on my second PC, I simply partitioned the drive in an identical manner to the first PC then restored the image backup from the other PC onto the second system. Then I rebooted the system and it came up without any issues. I ran MS Update and it downloaded and installed a couple of drivers (GFX, audio, etc) since the second system was slightly different hardware-wise. The only thing I changed on the second system was to give the PC a different name and also change the default user account name, to avoid networking conflicts.
That was a couple of weeks ago. I've been running both systems (seemingly) without any problems. I have two Win 8 licenses, but only used the first. I haven't been nagged or warned about the same licensing key when running essentially the same system on two different machines.
Aside from the obviously licensing issue, are there likely to be any other problems that may crop up?
