Is there...?
- Thread starter dougland
- Start date
If you tamper with the original preinstalled package you have to have the recovery disks that eMachines provides for their systems or are provided with links for downloading to burn to disk the recovery files for restoring to factory state. Being a used system without the original or transfer of ownership wiping the drive or replacing for a totall clean install will simply require downloading the updates available from the support site for that model.
Shadowhunter
New Member
You could always reformat and put Linux on it. 
You could always reformat and put Linux on it.
You can also dual boot Linux with Windows if you intend to have more then one OS. But the question there was if it was possible to restore the original factory condition of the machine not what OS to run. Without being the original owner and having the documentation and serial number/product key, etc. wiping the current drive or tossing a new larger one in are the options there.
The problem there is that the recovery and software disks would still be needed to see the original preinstalled copy restored. For seeing the links provided by eMachines you would to have the original account since all that was then registared to the original owner. That information is now useless where a clean install would be the best move.
Joe2005
New Member
Our compaq came with one, you just pused a button and clicked yes 47 billion times and it restored itself in about 5 hours.
Look for a recover XP option somewhere.
)I recently bailed someone out when they goofed XP on an older Socket A eMachines model by downloading trash to run. I'll put it in those terms. Since the system was bought new without any disks from a retail store I informed the parent that the advice on what to buy or what should be included was too late there.
The option provided by tech support was a link for download of the iso images to see the system restored according to the customer information as well as product key and serial since that was a first owner system there. But I ended giving the kid an SP1 recovery disk knowing that any restoration would get trashed again soon enough.
The recovery partition was already gone when trying to restore it to factory first at the time. The drive had been split up with a failed install of Pro on the first partition while the partitially running copy of Home was on the second one created. Forget recovery there fast enough. On a used system you will likely want to see a fresh clean install anyways for the best results.
The option provided by tech support was a link for download of the iso images to see the system restored according to the customer information as well as product key and serial since that was a first owner system there. But I ended giving the kid an SP1 recovery disk knowing that any restoration would get trashed again soon enough.
The recovery partition was already gone when trying to restore it to factory first at the time. The drive had been split up with a failed install of Pro on the first partition while the partitially running copy of Home was on the second one created. Forget recovery there fast enough. On a used system you will likely want to see a fresh clean install anyways for the best results.