Formatting C; on Vista Machine

Elendil · Jul 22, 2012

I have a couple of old laptops that are running Vista Home Premium.

I want to sell them, but first I want to reformat the C: drive and then wipe it to remove any data.

I cannot find any discs I may have gotten with the units when I bout them new. SO I am looking for a way to format my C: drive without screwing up the OS.

Any suggestions?

Thanks in advance.

Brink · Jul 22, 2012

Hello Elendill, and welcome to Vista Forums.

What brand and model are the laptops? They may still have a factory recovery partition on them that you could use to restore Vista back to factory conditions.

Elendil · Jul 22, 2012

Brink said:
Hello Elendill, and welcome to Vista Forums.

What brand and model are the laptops? They may still have a factory recovery partition on them that you could use to restore Vista back to factory conditions.

They are both Dell Inspiron 1501's. There is a D: partition titled recovery. But when I try to format C: I get an error message that says I cannot because the OS is resident on C:

Brink · Jul 22, 2012

That is normal. You cannot format C since you are currently running Vista that is on C. It's in use.

The link below at Dell can help show you how to do reinstall Vista back to factory conditions. This will delete everything you had in Vista and restore it like it was when it first came out of the box.

Restoring Your Computer´s Software to the Factory Settings | Dell

Elendil · Jul 22, 2012

Thanks. It got as far as Administrator password. I have no idea what it was set up to be when we purchased the computer. I am going to go to the area you linked to to see if there is info on how to reset it.

Thanks again for the quick responses. Very helpful.

Brink · Jul 22, 2012

You would just need to type in your user account's password since it was an administrator. It can be any administrator account's password.

Elendil · Jul 22, 2012

Brink said:
You would just need to type in your user account's password since it was an administrator. It can be any administrator account's password.

There is only one user account on the computer (my son). It is set up as an administrator. I know the password.

When I push <F8> and get to the point where I enter the admin password I get a message the says "The account has been disabled. Please see your system administrator".

Brink · Jul 22, 2012

In that case, log in to your son's account, enable the built-in Administrator account, and create a password for it, then try again to see if you may be able to do the factory recovery with it's password.

MilesAhead · Jul 22, 2012

See if this tutorial helps:

edit: Nevermind. See Brink's post with the link.

MilesAhead · Jul 22, 2012

Brink said:
In that case, log in to your son's account, enable the built-in Administrator account, and create a password for it, then try again to see if you may be able to do the factory recovery with it's password.

Dang! Thought I beat you to the punch for once.

Brink · Jul 22, 2012

MilesAhead said:
Brink said:

In that case, log in to your son's account, enable the built-in Administrator account, and create a password for it, then try again to see if you may be able to do the factory recovery with it's password.

Click to expand...

Dang! Thought I beat you to the punch for once.

LOL, sorry.

Elendil · Jul 22, 2012

Well, I got the administrator account set up and was able to start the process or restoring the computer to factory specs. About 2-3 minutes into the process I kept getting an error (tried 4-5 times). No message. Just a small white box with a red "X" and the word error. I'm just chalking it up to a bad hard drive I guess.

So I moved on to the second unit (same as the first). Set up the admin account. Except on this unit, there is no option for do a system reset after you hit <F8>. There is only one partition on the C: drive, so I am at a loss on how to format the second unit.

I want to add, thanks for the help on this.

It is appreciated.

Brink · Jul 22, 2012

Elendil,

If you like, you could go back to the first laptop that works, and use either link from Dell below for how to create a set of Dell recovery discs for that specific brand and model of laptop.

Using the Dell

OR

Creating Your System Recovery Discs with Dell DataSafe Local Backup 2.0 | Dell

Afterwards, see if you may be able to do a factory recovery using the recovery discs you just created. Since both laptops are the same model number, you will be able to use these recovery discs on both of them. You will just need to enter the separate product key numbers found on the COA sticker on the bottom (or under battery) of each laptop for that specific laptop.

MilesAhead · Jul 22, 2012

Also according to this page you can use OEM product key with Vista install files. Page has step by step instructions

Dell Community

There should be info how to create iso images enabling you to boot the DVD. That should remove all problems installing. I just glanced at the page quickly but the iso image install may require a phone call activation. I don't think the exe files need that though.

Formatting C; on Vista Machine

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