Factory Restore Gateway Laptop, Win XP No disk

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1

My girlfriend has a Gateway that’s obviously a few years old, she swore it didn’t work anymore but before she trashed it, I decided to plug it in and check it out.

She downloaded all kinds of crap to it - had a few fake virus protection programs, was very slow. I used R-Kill & Malware Bytes, seems to be functioning now.

It will not pick up WIFI, still acts kind of slow/sluggish so I was thinking about doing a factory reset. I did it on my Inspiron, but under system restore it had a factory reset option. The Gateway just has “restore to XX/XX/XXXX” which unfortunately, is the only (and fairly recent) restore point.

I’ve been searching forums and google results all night - at no point can I hit “r” or “f11” while its booting up and get a restore screen…best I can get to is the BIOS menu. If I do hit F11 while its booting up, it makes some awful beeping noises but never goes anyplace different.

Do I need the disk to restore it? If so, can I torrent a copy of it and burn it to a blank CD?

Thanks in advance for any input

2

some computers dont come with a restore partition, so you’ll need the original disks. contact gateway and see if they can send it to you.

3

You can torrent the discs but they are model specific I believe. Otherwise just use the key on the bottom and use a regular XP disc. Before that, you might want to try combofix. ONLY download it from here http://www.bleepingcomputer.com/download/combofix/. Other sites offer combofix, but they either fuck with it or it’s some sort of malware.

Also I believe it may be gateway that has the Factory Restores inside of windows … Start >> All Programs >> Gateway >> Factory Reset … or something like that.

4

I found a lot on eRecovery or eRestore which is just that Start>All Programs>Gateway>eRecovery>Factory Reset

Unfortunately there is no “Gateway” folder or factory reset button. There is a restore option, but its only for a certain date…not just wipe it clean.

5

I was just speculating what the folders might be, there might not have been a Gateway one. Factory reset doesn’t restore to default? Try combofix before you blow it away. What model is it?

Oh and gateway support/customer service sucks major chode.

6

ive done this before. contact gateway and have them send you a disc, its under $20 shipped

7

Or just download the OEM XP disc and use the key on the laptop as Progrocker said, the laptop will run a hell of lot better without whatever bloatware Gateway puts on it. You may need to go to gateways site for a few drivers.

8

I have an Xp disc somewhere, if that will help you

9

I have all 4 or 5 of the factory restore disks for my gateway laptop I bought for college (5/6 years ago) the same exact thing happened to my laptop too it was beyond jacked, but before curb stomping it I decided to just wipe everything and restore it, it works amazing now. Not sure if my discs will work with ur laptop but if you want you could pick them up from me.