Help to take my computer back to original settings

I have a sony laptop with windows XP. I want to take my computer to the
state it was when i took it out of the box. I have all of my additional
software on CD's that I can reload. When I originally got my computer I made
the "recovery disks" as instructed. My question is........will these disks
take my computer back to it's "original" state??? Are they easy to
use.........or are they going to ask me to do tasks I may not understand or
know the correct answer to?? What will happen to my internet
access..........will I just need to call my provider and re-configure the
connection?? Any help greatly appreciated.

nhall wrote:
> I have a sony laptop with windows XP. I want to take my computer
> to the state it was when i took it out of the box. I have all of
> my additional software on CD's that I can reload. When I
> originally got my computer I made the "recovery disks" as
> instructed. My question is........will these disks take my
> computer back to it's "original" state??? Are they easy to
> use.........or are they going to ask me to do tasks I may not
> understand or know the correct answer to?? What will happen to my
> internet access..........will I just need to call my provider and
> re-configure the connection?? Any help greatly appreciated.

Ask Sony.
They created the process to restore your laptop.

More than likely - at some point - you will run up against something you
might not understand.

--
Shenan Stanley
MS-MVP
--
How To Ask Questions The Smart Way
http://www.catb.org/~esr/faqs/smart-questions.html

"Recovery disks",from where did you get the data to make them,OS,or from
the hard drive installed on the pc.If hd,you probably have the option to
reset
pc to default settings from mfg,tap F8 on pc start,a menu to "restore pc to
orig-
inal settings" should be available.Otherwise,install youre restore cds as
outlined
from the mfg,all user data will be lost as will the ISP (internet
connection).

"nhall" wrote:

> I have a sony laptop with windows XP. I want to take my computer to the
> state it was when i took it out of the box. I have all of my additional
> software on CD's that I can reload. When I originally got my computer I made
> the "recovery disks" as instructed. My question is........will these disks
> take my computer back to it's "original" state??? Are they easy to
> use.........or are they going to ask me to do tasks I may not understand or
> know the correct answer to?? What will happen to my internet
> access..........will I just need to call my provider and re-configure the
> connection?? Any help greatly appreciated.
>

On Wed, 30 Jul 2008 08:32:01 -0700, nhall
<nhall@discussions.microsoft.com> wrote:

> I have a sony laptop with windows XP. I want to take my computer to the
> state it was when i took it out of the box. I have all of my additional
> software on CD's that I can reload. When I originally got my computer I made
> the "recovery disks" as instructed. My question is........will these disks
> take my computer back to it's "original" state???


Presumably, but bear in mind that none of us here can be sure that you
have everything you need and that you made the recovery disks
correctly.


> Are they easy to
> use


They should be.


> or are they going to ask me to do tasks I may not understand or
> know the correct answer to??


I don't know anything about what you may or may not understand, and
there's no way I, or anyone else here, can answer such a question for
sure. However the very fact that you ask such a question leads me to
guess that you're a beginner at this and that there's a distinct
possibility of your not understanding something.




> What will happen to my internet
> access..........will I just need to call my provider and re-configure the
> connection?? Any help greatly appreciated.


It depends on what kind of internet access you have. Dialup? Always-on
broadband? For example, if it's dialup, you'll have to reenter the
number to dial; if it's broadband, you don't. And you'll certainly
have to reenter all the information for E-mail: your name, E-mail
address, POP3 server name, SMTP server name.

Will you have to call your provider to do that? No you shouldn't have
to. You should be able to record everything you need now, and reenter
it after reinstalling. Whether you will be able to do that correctly,
I don't know.

Obviously you feel very timid about doing this. I don't know anything
about why you even want to do this (and it's unfortunately very often
done for poor reasons), nor do I know anything about your technical
skills. However your timidity leads me to guess that you are not
confident of your technical abilities, so I suggest that you might be
much better off finding a skilled friend to help you, or even paying a
professional (*not* someone from one of the big box stores, like the
Geek Squad) to do it for you.

--
Ken Blake, Microsoft MVP - Windows Desktop Experience
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