Sylvain said:
thank you
Basically, I want to be able to restore the PC to its original setting
as when it was sold. usually the retailer provides some CD to do that.
(clean: neat, cool, pukka, nice looking and quite practicle)
OK, now I understand. Actually, not all OEM's provide a restore disk.
Legally, a computer mftr. selling a computer with a preinstalled
Microsoft operating system needs to provide a way for the buyer to
return the computer to the condition in which he bought it. That can be
done by:
1. Providing a physical cd with the actual operating system on it.
Usually cd's with drivers and preinstalled software (if any) would also
be included in this case.
2. Providing a physical cd with an *image* of the operating system,
drivers and software. This is normally called a Restore or Recovery
Disk.
3. Providing an image as in #2 above but instead of cd's the image is
stored on a special, sometimes hidden, partition on the hard drive.
So you will need to ask your friend which of these categories your
computer falls into and act accordingly. My suspicion is that this is a
generic computer that came with a generic OEM disk and that is what
you'd need to get from either your friend or the shop where he
originally bought the pc. If that isn't possible, then you would need
to buy Windows XP and do a clean installation. Then you would need to
find the drivers for whatever hardware is in the machine and install
any desired programs from installation media.
http://michaelstevenstech.com/cleanxpinstall.html - Clean Install
Malke