Hi ladies and gents

I need to wipe and reboot my Compaq Presario M2000 laptop back to factory settings. I've made a back up of all my stuff on an external hard drive and (think) I’ve the original operating discs. However, it doesn't seem to working.

The discs I have are 'Operating System CD, Microsoft Windows XP HE, Service Pack 2' and 'Application and Driver Recovery DVD'. I thought you just started your laptop with one of these in (I wasn't sure which one so I've tried both) and that was it, job done. Am I barking up the wrong tree or is there something wrong? Should I be doing something different?

Anyone's help would be much appreciated

Cheers

Ben

Answer:
Hi there,

Sounds like your laptop isn’t booting from the CD drive you’ve your operating systems CD in. If you turn off your laptop (not reboot) and then turn it on again, the first screen you’ll see will give you an option to go into the bios/boot settings (it's usually one of the 'F' keys like F2).

Look for the boot drive list (it will have your HDD and other drives listed) and change the first boot device to your CD drive, then save and exit. It should then look to boot from the CD drive and the recovery CD should take it from there.

If that doesn't work, boot the laptop up fully, and then insert the Operating system CD, as it might have an autorun file which will then open up a list of options. Alternatively look through the files on the CD for an install.exe file or similar and go from there.

Alternatively, you can go into Windows settings (depending on which version you have) and there might be an option to return Windows to it's original say.

Final option (I've done this when selling laptops) is go to Control Panel, then add/remove applications and remove everything you want to get rid of or was loaded onto the laptop after you got it. Then go to Accessories - System Tools - Disk Defragmenter and defragment your drive. Then in the same menu use Disk Cleanup to remove unwnted files and your Personal computer will be clean.

Hope this helps you - good luck!

Answer:
Look in your manual it will tell you what to press on reboot-Turning on and off is

all that is.My Acer for example on turn on.I’ve to press ALT F10 together and

hold.If you just put your disc in they have no path and will corrupt your hard drive.

I would go to a forum of your personal make and ask if you don't have info in the

manual or phone them and ask.Could work out a lot cheaper.Before you reset make sure you turn off System

Restore to clear all data.

Answer:
Before you wipe it (or on a different computer) head to the Compaq site and download all of the drivers you'll need for your laptop - they should be simple to find. Once you've done that get an XP cd from anywhere and reinstall.

It'll mean a bit of extra fiddling about but you'll be back to square one.