What is a "recovery disk"?

  • Thread starter Thread starter Richard Fangnail
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Richard Fangnail

I know someone who has a Windows computer with two "recovery disks."
These disks do not say Windows or "operating system" on the disks. She
claims there was no Windows or OS CD that came with the computer.

Do you know what the recovery disks would be? From googling, it seems
they might have the Windows installation files on them.
 
Richard said:
I know someone who has a Windows computer with two "recovery disks."
These disks do not say Windows or "operating system" on the disks. She
claims there was no Windows or OS CD that came with the computer.

Do you know what the recovery disks would be? From googling, it seems
they might have the Windows installation files on them.
Click to expand...

A proprietary version of windows included with the vendors install files
and associated, mostly useless apps.
 
Term normally used to describe CD discs to restore that same computer to its
original factory installation. Wipes everything out on the hard disk
including partitions, then starts from there for recovery.
The original factory installation contains some operating system. The
recovery discs are specific to a particular make and model, and sometimes
some other characteristic of some manufacturers PC.
The term "disk" is not referrent to CD media. This is "disc". "Disk" for
hard drive. "Diskette" for floppy media.
 
Richard Fangnail said:
I know someone who has a Windows computer with two "recovery disks."
These disks do not say Windows or "operating system" on the disks. She
claims there was no Windows or OS CD that came with the computer.

Do you know what the recovery disks would be? From googling, it seems
they might have the Windows installation files on them.
Click to expand...

These "recovery disks" normally include a disk image file of the
installed Windows just as it was when the computer left the factory.

When these disks are used what happens is that the existing contents
of the hard drive are totally erased, gone forever, including all user
data files, installed programs, etc. Then the disk image is copied
from the CDs to the hard drive, resulting in a fresh new copy of
Windows (plus any other software that came bundled with the new PC)
jsut exactly as it was the day it left the factory.

Hope this explains the situation.

Good luck

Ron Martell Duncan B.C. Canada
 
Ron, how would you activate the recovery disks?

I was hoping we could copy just IE from there but what you said doesn't
suggest that we could.
 
Richard Fangnail said:
Ron, how would you activate the recovery disks?

I was hoping we could copy just IE from there but what you said doesn't
suggest that we could.
Click to expand...

No. Pretty much all of the "system recovery" disks are an "all or
nothing" situation, and it is not possible to restore a specific file.

What is the exact problem with IE that you are trying to resolve?

Ron Martell Duncan B.C. Canada
 
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