I have a toshiba sattelite laptop with windows 7 (64) home prem OA installed on it. I never received a windows disk with the computer.

Anyways, I never made an original restore point for my computer, and I just want a fresh start. Spyware and crap that is impossible to get rid of, and now all of a sudden it's running like crap on start up.

I just want to reformat with a disk and start from new. So can i just download any retail version of windows 7 home premium, burn it to a dvd, boot from disk, download drivers, and i'm set?
I have a key on the bottom of my computer to activate.

any help or recommendations would be much appreciated,
thanks so much.

Are you sure it didn't come with a recovery partition? I know this used to work on my older laptop.


Recovery Partition

1

Hold down the "0" key while turning on or restarting the Toshiba laptop with Windows 7.


2

Click "es" at the warning screen.


3

Select "Recovery of Factory Default Software" and click "Next."


4

Select to "Recover to out-of-the-box state," "Recover without changing the hard drive partitions" or "Recover to a custom size partition." If you select the final option you will need to define your partitions. Click "Next." Click "Next" to verify that you are aware that all of your personal programs and files will be erased. The recovery process begins.


5

Press any key when a message appears on the screen stating that the recovery process is complete. The Toshiba laptop with Windows 7 will restart and boot up to the Windows 7 setup screen where you can begin personalizing Windows 7 on the laptop.

 

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If you just want a fresh start like I did when I first bought my laptop, here is the easiest way to do it without buying more DVDs, software, etc:

1. Use a torrent program to download a copy of Windows 7 and look at your key on the bottom of the laptop for the exact version you need, ie. 64/32 bit, Home, Pro, Ultimate

2. Burn the ISO to a DVD when you get it downloaded

3. Go out on the internet before you reformat and make sure to at least grab your network device drivers so you can install and connect to the internet immediately after formatting is done. This way you can let Windows find most of the drivers it needs off the internet.

4. Install a fresh copy and then install drivers and software you need, antivirus, firefox, etc, etc.

5. ???

6. Profit


I bought a new laptop December last year that did not have a Windows 7 DVD with it. I never even started it up before I did the above steps and reformatted to a fresh copy of Windows Home 64bit Premium. Keep in mind, technically, downloading the OS DVD ISO is not kosher but it is not really stealing the software since you do own a full legal copy of the OS when you bought the laptop and all your are doing is downloading a new copy of the media since you "lost" yours. Hope this helps.


Edit: And Keypek's advice above is fine if you want to go back to factory setup but I would suggest a clean slate cause you probably don't need all the bloatware crap that comes with the machine stock.

 

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Dont TORRENT a copy, there are several that have spyware built into the ISO. Borrow a buddies.


After the reinstall:

Download the PC Decrapifier. Run it.

Reboot.

Update Windows.

Reboot a jillion times during this.

Download CCleamer. Run it.

Download EASEUS Partition Manager. Run it. Shronk the Partition to less than 20GB.

Image the Drive.

Grown the partition back to a larger amount.

ty ty for all the good help, keypek's advice worked, so i just went with that. all is well now, and I am going to use all those cleaners now.

thanks again for the advice.

what does using the partition software and re imaging the drive help?

just curious, thanks.

and also does it matter that the c:/ partition right now after doing all the recommedations is at 28.1GB used space?

not sure why he says to shrink the partition before imaging but i can guess that it's to be safe in teh future in case you put in a smaller harddrive. you cant restore a big image to a smaller drive but you can put a small image onto a bigger drive. if that makes sense.

win7 is a pretty big install but not 28 gigs worth. sounds like a lot of default programs and extra crap got installed with the toshiba recovery. first thing i'd do is go into add/remove programs and uninstall all the stuff you dont need.

also, for anyone else interested in this thread, don't torrent a copy of win7. you can get the real thing right from the source, see http://forums.mydigitallife.info/threads/28517-Windows-7-w-o-SP1-and-SP1-Media-Refresh-Direct-Download-Links for microsoft and digital river links

 

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Wow, thanks a ton for the link. Last thing I read, was a year ago probably, that you have to call MS and pay them 15 bucks or something to get a full copy of the software without key to replace a "lost" media copy. But that was for a snail mailed DVD and I don't remember seeing any digital downloads. Thanks for the heads up.

About torrenting, if you read the comments, there will be someone saying it is not legit if it is a bad copy. Then just ignore those. Find the one with good comments.

Also, please understand, I DO NOT advocate downloading illegal software. But, I don't see any problem downloading media that I have a legit key for and have a legitimate claim to use. Sorry for any confusion. And glad you got your computer back up and running.

 

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Yep.





PC Decrapifier makes this alot simplier.

And yet, I've never seen one.