how to reinstall windows 8 on dell laptop

Check your regular backup program (you do back up regularly, don’t you?) for an image-backup feature, quite likely labeled Disaster Recovery. With 500GB and 1TB drives now readily available and reasonably priced, though, I suggest you go as big as you can afford that way you can save more than one copy of your files to the drive, or even use it to back up multiple PCs.Īnd what software should you use? Ghost and TrueImage are the two best-known image-backup programs, but they aren’t the only ones. If your 160GB hard drive has 90GB of data on it, a 200GB external drive will make a good choice. For best results, pick one that’s at least twice the size of all the data you have. What should you back up to? An external hard drive–they’re fast, cheap, and easy to work with. Make sure you have all of the following before you take any action. The partition does the same thing as a restore disc does.Īn actual Microsoft Windows CD or DVD is the best tool of them all, but unless you bought an upgrade to a newer version of Windows, you probably don’t have one.

Check your documentation to learn whether you have one and how to access it. You access it by pressing a particular key combination at boot time. If your PC came with a restore disc, but you can’t locate it, see “ How Do I Restore Windows If I’ve Lost My Restore CD?”Ī restore partition lies hidden on the hard drive. Some manufacturers don’t actually ship a separate restore disc with your PC, but instead install software on the hard drive that you can use to create your own restore discs. In most cases the recovery disc will destroy all of your data–documents, photos, and so on–while “saving” your system. Most new PCs come with a restore disc, making it easy to return your system’s software to the same condition it was in when you first pulled the machine out of the box.A restore disc is a bootable CD or DVD that can restore your hard drive to the exact contents it had when the PC left the factory.

How to reinstall windows 8 on dell laptop