reformatting my laptop BUT

reply to post by glen200376


try unplugging the external,reboot,press f9 and if the recovery menu shows up then you still have the hidden partition and only blanked the main part of the drive that windows was on.

I haven't even started yet xD I'm not sure where the 'point of no return' is.

reply to post by sarra1833


If the recovery partition is still there(if it goes there by pressing f9 without the external drive plugged in)it will be fine.It will reinstall windows to the laptops built in hard drive though.
I'm not sure about restoring to the external drive but the easy and safe option would be to restore to the built in drive.

All right. I'll give it a try. wish me luck.

Good luck,I know you can do it!

Holy moses, it took all of 15 min and now my pc is back to factory and I'm just adding on the things I want. Yay! I'm so glad this worked. Didn't need anything either. Unsure how I got into it all but whatever I did worked perfectly.

Thanks SO much for the help. She is running so much faster now and everything.

reply to post by sarra1833


That's great,I told you would manage it no bother.
Glad I could help,any problems p.m. me.

Take an image at least once a week and put it on an external hard drive and you can restore it at any time you want to. I always make 2 at same time because once before my image was corrupt for some reason so I make 2 and both got to 2 seperate hard drives just in case I need them.
I always clean and check my PC for viruses etc and defrag before I make an image though.