Win XP Home Factory Reset ?

Channel Hopper

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I have a small Dell desktop PC which I was using up to a year ago running preinstalled XP home (Service Pack 3) with a COA hologram licence on the side.

It has no partition on the hard drive with a recovery options, but I would like to remove all personal data within it and restore to the original condition as I got it, in order to use at home with the family.

Is there any way to set it back to factory condition without the Windows CD ?
 

excollier

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Did you set a restore point when SP3 was installed, that will take it back.
Actually, one should have been automatically set, but you may have to go through loads of tedious security patches etc for the time since SP3 went on.
Windows can be such a time consuming os at times.
 

A nonymous

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Channel Hopper if you want i can send you a copy of my Dell XP Installation disk, just PM me your address. You will still need to back up your data but the Installation disk will go straight in without asking for the COA. You will be able to find the drivers on the Dell website using the service Tag on the machine.

The installation disk works on all Dells as its the one i use on My Vostro as the Vista disk it came with is quite frankly cack :D

i also use it on 2 other Optiplex GX520s in the house and also my daughters Optiplex 170L.

Nano
 

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Take out the HDD and hit it with a hammer until it's completely mangled, usually does the job of removing personal data... O-Ha

Also gets rid of the Windows virus too, oh wait, that's the OS... :confused
 

Channel Hopper

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[sub]Thanks for the offer, I don't need any data off the PC, it's really just to clean out the office stuff and save some of the hard drive, which is limited to 20GB[/sub][sub], [/sub]

[sub]Will PM you[/sub]
 

Channel Hopper

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Just testing on another machine

_http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=19751
 
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