Creating Recovery Disc - COMPLETED THANKS

[Calverley Lad]

When I purchased my wife's  Toshiba laptop with Vista installed, I first removed the trial antivirus program.
This laptop came with a backup program which removed the uncertainty of 'how do you do it'.
Just 1 DVD required, which I then stored before repeating the process for a second time, this time I gave my wife the disc and told her her laptop required disc as a safeguard. (She then put it away with the family jewels?)
 Brian

[macbeth]

I scrounged an old HP laptop to use as my media centre - I did not have any disks, and the hard disk had been wiped.

I found the model number & Serial number - contacted HP support via their web site and purchased a set of recovery disks for $30AUD.

Well worth it, I thought. Most of the big manufacturers will have the disks for sale.

[Selina]

Deb D - That is exactly what I fear happening to me!  Hopefully you will never need to recover.

Brian - It looks like the process should be straightfoward, just don't like to enter into it until fully ready, says only one go.

macbeth - reading manual I printed off which covers all models, it does say that a disc can be purchased from the HP website so if I do make a pig's ear of it I can fall back on that option.  Not sure how the price you quote converts but sounds reasonable.

Thanks for all replies.

Selina

[Calverley Lad]

Selina
Do you not have a partition on your hard drive with a copy of your original installation?
Subject to confirmation, most computers that don't have software supplied have some sort of a program that allows you to create a copy of your hard drive.
(I was lucky, in that all the software that was installed onto my hard drive I got)
Be aware that sometimes a recovery disc is supplied, this only takes your computer back to how it was supplied and does not cover any programs installed since purchase.
 Brian

[Selina]

Hi Brian,

I have just had a better look.  There is a recovery partition (13.64 GB) and I see how to access HP Recovery Media Creation so now I know roughly how many discs I need it should be straight forward.

There is some software installed, I haven't added much to my present elderly computer, mostly just use what it came with  and as I am only used to Works word processor, Microsoft Office Starter will probably be enough for my purposes at present.

Once I get this done I will move on to getting it online!

Selina

[Calverley Lad]

So by my reckoning, 4.7Gb capacity for a DVD disc, you need 3 discs.
Just start up your recovery program and feed a disc as required.
 Best of luck.
 Brian

[Selina]

Successfully created discs today.  Told me at the beginning that I needed 4 - think that is due to way it divides up to get prepare, burn and verify on each.

Had rise in blood pressure on disc 2 when I got message that it was experiencing difficulties, please try again.  Put fresh disc in and it was fine.

Now have to convert all my Works files into Wordpad so that that Word can open them.

Will soon be back with another thread for next stage - i.e. getting it online!

Thanks for the help.

Selina