(Upbeat Music)
- [Thunder E] Hi, this is Thunder E from booredatwork.com
and today we're going to do a nice quick video
to show you how to factory reset a Windows 7 PC.
Now, you're probably one of the many millions of people
who still has a Windows 7 PC.
Yes, not everyone has adopted Windows 8
and you love Windows 7 and, say,
you want to get rid of it now and you wanna
get a Windows 8 PC but you love this computer
and you want to give it to someone special,
say, a little brother, cousin, or a friend
and, you know, you're wondering how do I actually
just clear this out, wipe it,
without reinstalling Windows and all that fun jazz.
Actually not really fun.
So, we're doing this off screen video
to show you how to do a factory reset
and we're gonna go through the whole process
plus the reset itself.
So the first thing you wanna go do
is you want to go to your start icon there.
Click that.
And scroll all the say to Control Panel.
Click on Control Panel.
Go to System and Security on the very top.
Click on that.
And let's see if we can zoom in a little closer here.
Now in System and Security, you want to scroll
all the way down to the third to the bottom icon
or, actually, forth to bottom,
which'll be Back Up and Restore.
Which is in between Power Options
and Windows Anytime Upgrade.
If you are not on the highest version of Windows.
Click on that.
Now it says Back up and restore.
You see Back up and restore here.
It says Windows Back Up.
It says Restore could not find a back up
for this computer because we never created one.
So, it says select another back up
or you can go into recover system settings.
So we click on that.
Again, there are no options to do a factory reset.
You have System Restore.
Open System Restore options,
but going to Advanced Recovery Methods.
You click on that.
That gives you two options.
Use a system image
or return your computer to factory conditions
which is what we want.
To return computer to factory conditions.
We click on that.
That's just started now.
Do you want to back up your files?
We suggest you back up all your files.
You can use many mediums to back up.
You know, you can back up your photos and videos
on a portable hard drive or you can also use
things like SkyDrive.
You can use Dropbox or you can use Google Drive
if you want to.
There's a great article from Bwone.
You can definitely check that out.
We'll have a link for you with this video
on how to back up your systems.
And it's a very clean article that shows you
all the things you need to do.
So, just pugging that in for Bwone there.
In our case, we don't wanna back up anything
so we are going to skip.
So you have chosen not to back up, yada yada yada
Restart computer, recovery.
Yes, and we will restart.
And I'm just gonna zoom out a little bit here.
Just waiting for this to restart.
It's going through the process.
Hey guys.
And then, it should restart.
We might do some speed throughs
through some of the process here
so just letting you guys know.
But, we will have the full video
and it probably might be just a speed run
of certain section, while it's backing up.
So, enjoy.
Alright so we're here.
System recovery options.
Keyboard input.
We hit next.
Please wait.
Now we do the Acer recover management mode
Restore Operating System to Factory Settings
There's Restore and Retain Data.
So you have options.
We can still retain data and do that,
but what we really want to do a clean wipe.
So we select the first option.
This action will erase data on C.
The option will return your computer
to factory settings, yada, yada, yada.
We can go back, next, or cancel.
So we're gonna go next.
Shows you a hard drive size, a computer.
Acer and we have 285 gigabytes of hard drive space.
Hit next again.
This action will erase existing data on the partition.
Are we happy with this?
Yes, we are.
So now this is doing its job in wiping
and setting Windows into that clean, wiped format.
So, this might take a while.
As you can see, we've selected Restore point,
checking passwords is going to do that,
it's going to give us a notice,
Restore destination and restore progress.
Right now, I believe we are restore process
because these been checked off.
So, we just let that go and watch what happens.
(intense music)
You can see now it's starting up Windows.
And in total, from the time we started this video
till this point it took about 24 minutes.
And this depends on the system
of what you're running right now.
A system again's an Acer Spire 1722.
It's a netbook and that took only 24 minutes
to set up Windows.
So we had the set up process
and basically we're going to
set this up for someone else.
We will, you know, do the whole initial windows setup.
Put in name of computer, all that fun jazz
that we can do when you setup your PC the first time.
We ran through most of it because of course
you were just doing the boot up,
but we just wanted to show you what it looked like
so it was speed run through all that stuff.
Now Windows is starting up services
and we're just gonna let this run and see.
So you see it's a very simple process
to restore your PC to factory settings.
Granted in Windows 7 the option
is not readily available at a click of a button
or through at least a second click of an option.
You do have to go in deep into the system a little bit.
Of course, you have to do the control panel,
Back up restore, go into the advanced settings
to actually get to this option.
Now the menu screen you saw with Acer
will differ with different PC.
If you have a Sony PC, if you have a Dell,
if you have an HP, if you have a something from Asus,
Any of the different companies will look different
but the process will still be the same
for you to do that.
So, the set up is starting up
and we will continue to set this up,
this PC for whoever we want to give it to.
But hopefully you guys enjoyed that.
If you have any questions, any comments, let us know.
By now it's at 20%.
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and just click on them.
Let's see if we can get there, at 100%.
Yes, we have...
It's applying system settings,
We'll see.
We just want to get to that first prompt
where it says, you know, this is Windows, yada, yada, yada.
All that fun stuff per se,
but this might take a little bit of time.
If it doesn't, well you know what,
Thank you very much, guys
and enjoy your entertainment.