[iamdave81]

hi, i would like to restore my factory settings on my dell latitude c600 laptop but im unsure how to do it. it runs xp now but originally came with windows 2000.
i have no discs and i am aware that restoring factory settings will put it back to windows 2000 and thats fine. any help on how to do this would be appreciated. thanks

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Hi iamdave81 and welcome to GeeksToGo.

If you don't have any discs, you might have a special "recovery" partition.

When you go to My Computer, are there any other drives listed? Maybe one called "RECOVERY"?

It's unlikely this will re-install the old copy of Win 2000, but every recovery option is different.

Post back and let us know what you find


Cheers,
Deon.

[Deon]

Hi iamdave81 and welcome to GeeksToGo.

If you don't have any discs, you might have a special "recovery" partition.

When you go to My Computer, are there any other drives listed? Maybe one called "RECOVERY"?

It's unlikely this will re-install the old copy of Win 2000, but every recovery option is different.

Post back and let us know what you find


Cheers,
Deon.

[dsenette]

It's unlikely this will re-install the old copy of Win 2000, but every recovery option is different.

if the PC came with 2000 installed and it has a recovery partition, then it WILL reinstall windows 2000...there's no way for it to install anything else if that's what was placed into the recovery partition

the practice of putting recovery partitions on computers instead of sending recovery disks started a bit after 2000 went out of common use....so i'm going to doubt that the system has a recovery partition (though it's still possible)

you would need to have the recovery disks from dell (if you contact support they may be able to send you some for a small fee) to get everything back to the way it shipped....other than that you would need to have a full version of windows XP (that is legal and not installed on another computer) to format and reinstall...alternately you could pick up a full retail version of windows 2000 off of ebay (if you can find it) and install that....