Restoring a Laptop

[gamevet]

I don't know about Toshiba, but when I repaired a dell laptop for a friend, I downloaded the recovery disc from Dell. You can always burn one from your laptop, that should have it available.

[kedawa]

The problem with doing a recovery is that it's going to be way out of date and probably full of crapware.
On the plus side, you won't need to activate or hunt down drivers.

[gamevet]

The problem with doing a recovery is that it's going to be way out of date and probably full of crapware.
On the plus side, you won't need to activate or hunt down drivers.

That's an easy fix. The first thing you do is go to the manufacturer's website, that will usually offer a system scan to determine if you have the latest drivers, and they'll download the latest with a click of a button.

The first thing I did when I bought a boxed PC, was go into the program files and start deleting programs I know I'll never need. The whole process takes less than an hour.

[kedawa]

The updates could take a long time with multiple restarts, though.

[gamevet]

The updates could take a long time with multiple restarts, though.

I guess it depends on your internet connection. I had to replace a 750gig HDD in my 2009 HP computer and the updates didn't take long at all.

[kedawa]

It also depends on your OS and how outdated it is.
Updating Vista will be a much longer process than updating Windows 7, especially if the factory install is too old to have the Service Packs, since there are more updates and more of them require restarts.
Most of it is unattended stuff anyway, so either way it's not that bad, but I have always preferred using the most current install disk.

[gamevet]

It also depends on your OS and how outdated it is.
Updating Vista will be a much longer process than updating Windows 7, especially if the factory install is too old to have the Service Packs, since there are more updates and more of them require restarts.
Most of it is unattended stuff anyway, so either way it's not that bad, but I have always preferred using the most current install disk.

Yeah, XP is very slow.

That HP computer I had, came with Vista and the Windows 7 upgrade. I basically had to use the recovery discs to install Vista and then do the Windows 7 upgrade. It may have taken longer than I remember, but I usually don't sit around while the computer is doing its thing.