How to format a laptop hard drive?

[oli090]

So, im going skiing tomorrow and my laptop takes a year to load up and a year to do anything else, im taking it solely for watching films. Im taking a external hard drive so i dont mind swiping the drive. It has my OS onit so when i did a strait forward format it said cant do that. Im not very good with windows so i guess someone on here would be better. Any help before tonight would be 110% appreciated.

 

[vanthus]

I'm probably being thick but I don't quite follow,
do you want to do a clean install,or what?

 

[oli090]

i want to just, umm, reset to factory defaults?

 

[vanthus]

Do you have a windows OS disk or recovery disks,if not what is the make and model
of your laptop.

 

[oli090]

The laptop didnt come with any disks, just manuals and stuff. The model of it is acer aspire 5742z, and im running windows 7 and i think its 64 bit.

 

[vanthus]

Check if you have the acer recovery manager on your system,
click start/programs/“Acer Recovery Management"/Click the “Restore” button/
click Restore System to Factory Default.
Failing that try pressing the Alt + F10 keys on startup,that's the normal
keys to access restore to factory settings on an Acer.

 

[oli090]

sorry for not replying spent the last like hour trying to get my laptop to that point (slow as hell). Ill update as soon as it is done.

 

[oli090]

Thank you ever so much, still not as fast as my pc im on here but you know 30x faster than before. + rep

 

[vanthus]

Excellent,