Today I will be talking about computer recovery since today.. you guessed it, I’m recovering a computer.  I want to take this time to make a point for all those who have bought a new laptop or desktop and did not get any recovery software with your purchase.

When you first buy your computer new these days, most do not come with a recovery cd or dvd but normally you can purchase one from the respective company.  If you will notice after booting your new computer by accessing or “clicking” the “My Computer” or “Computer” icon in the start menu it brings up the explorer window where you will notice an extra drive other than your main “C” drive or your “CD/DVD” maybe labeled as “D” and may even be named as “recovery” or something similar.  Well this is the drive that you will recover your computer from in case it ever crashes… oh, and it will crash, I almost guarantee it!!!  Here is where a big problem can start for you right out of the “get go”..  if you format your hard drive the traditional way to recover your computer you will most likely delete this drive and all your pre-installed recovery software which will leave you in a big pickle of a mess.

NOT ALL RECOVERIES ARE CREATED EQUAL

Today my recovery project is a bit different than most because the particular laptop which runs Windows Vista has a bad CD/DVD drive and so it is that I can’t use it to recover.  This computer does not have a recovery partition so that is not an option for recovery.  In my case I just happen to have a portable CD/DVD usb drive that I can use and fortunately I also have the recovery disk from the manufacturer in hand.

FIRST THINGS FIRST

Before I start any computer recovery process, I like to work with a clean computer.  Time to get out the cleaner which could even include a can of compressed air.  I clean the computer up, usually inside and out and make sure all the fans are working properly..  an overheating computer can cause havoc on a recovery process 🙁 …

GETTING TO IT

So the computer is all cleaned up and we are ready to start the recovery.

First thing we got to do is make the computer boot from the USB CD/DVD with the recovery software in it.  This is usually accomplished by accessing the computers “BIOS” program or “SETUP”  as some manufacturers call it.   To access the BIOS you will need to watch your screen on bootup and it will tell you to either hit “F2” or “Del” or maybe some other key to launch the program.  After you are in the BIOS you just need to find where it allows you to change the drive boot order.  Normally the first boot drive is the hard drive.  If the option is there, change it to USB drive for the first boot drive then save your changes and exit the BIOS program..  make sure you have already inserted your recovery disk into the USB drive or it won’t boot from the USB CD/DVD.

ON OUR WAY

I certainly hope at this point you were able to save all important documents and pictures and any other item that you have been meaning to backup for years because at this point, the recovery will wipe the computer completely clean and re-install all software and drivers as it came from the manufacturer…  before you continue please make sure you have backed up on an external device “ALL” of your important data.

So now we are ready to recover and insert the disc, in my case a disk called “System Disc” goes first followed by the “Recovery Disc 1”.  We are now on our way to recovering the laptop.

Well the laptop went through the recovery with my only having to switch discs out a couple times as it had asked me to do.  Pretty easy recovery actually. Now to go through the registration and set up the first user account.

Everything from this point is just straight forward like getting the wireless network configured and then running virus scans on all the old backup files before copying them back to the computer.  Sometimes things are not this easy when it comes to recovering a computer.  If you have a question about a computer recovery problem, please fire me off an email @ tkeesling82@gmail.com