Windows XP forum: How do I wipe my laptop clean???

had the ability to create it if it has a CD burner. That's what you need. You said it was last done by a friend. That person would have needed the same media to rebuild your laptop properly and legally. Without such, you might contact HP to see if recovery disks are still available for purchase. If not, you would have to buy a copy of XP and hunt down all the drivers for the laptop hardware. Can you locate the recovery disks?

just for clarity, the computer that my friend worked on was my desktop ... this is a laptop, which has never had this done to it.

I checked out a few PDFs on that page, but nothing that I could see that would direct me to this process. Help?
Thanks!
Sandy

computer clean? I guess I am less sophisticated about how to do all this than you thought! I need those step by steps first, then how to reload. Do you have that info?
Thanks

that it sounds as if your real goal is a clean installation and not just to have an empty drive. You are looking to restore system performance which has degraded over time. The recovery process will accomplish both. It will remove everything. This means the original installation and all that you have accumulated over time. It will bring the PC back to the factory configuration. Once in this condition, you will have plenty more to do as all of the windows updates that were available after that recovery disk was created will also be gone. You will need to go through the update process for the operating system and quite possibly some of the drivers. MS will provide the OS updates and the PCs manufacturer should have any driver updates. There are possibly some other ways to boost performance. One way might be to increase the amount of RAM. Another is definitely to reduce the number processes that automatically load at startup. That's another story for another day. Good luck to you. This is how you learn...not by being walked through step by step but by getting pointed in the right direction and then banging your head against the problem until you figure it out yourself. You won't die...most don't anyway.