I'm not able to factory reset my windows 7 PC.

[Mixcader]

Hello all, recently I've gotten an old gaming PC for Christmas. I just got the chance yesterday to really get on and mess around with it and download steam and some games and all that. But after about my 4th or 5th install I noticed that I was extremely low on storage on the on-board hard drive, so naturally I asked my awesome nerd of a uncle to help me out. He went down into his nerd cave and came back up and handed me an external hard drive to see if it would help. but alas, it didn't. you see, the on-board hard drive only had a total of 238 GB of storage and the external hard drive my uncle gave me had 111 GB. But then, after i'd suffered through the extreme bottle neck of the download with the old external hard drive, (It was literally only writing at around 2 Mg a sec while my download was literally 100 mg) and used up all the storage on there, I came up with a brilliant plan, or so I thought at the time anyways. I thought to myself, why don't I just give the good ol' PC a good factory reset to clear out all the unwanted files that were left behind when I first received the system. so, I started my new journey by first opening up the control panel and looking at what she had to offer, (bear in mind, i'm only really used to windows 10, while the OS on this PC is windows 7) so after a swift click on system and security and then followed by a click on back-up and restore. I was then kindly greeted by a screen that said a windows backup hadn't been set up and that windows couldn't find a backup on the computer. Well, I thought to myself, That isn't really what i'm looking for anyways so I click on the hyperlink looking text below all that that said Recover system settings on your computer. Then, I read through the system restore description, it didn't really seem like what I wanted to do either, did they not just have a factory reset button back in the windows 7 days? Guess us people with windows 8 and above are pretty lucky. But all hope wasn't lost, for I saw another hyperlink looking text that read Advanced recovery methods, Oh, I thought to myself, that's where the factory reset option must be, don't want those old folks accidentally deleting their total of 2 GB of used storage. so with a hasty click I read what came up next. Use a system image that I created earlier to recover my computer, or reinstall windows, now at first I thought that that would be exactly what I wanted, but then I saw what was in parenthesis right next to it. requires windows installation disc. So knowing plain well that my uncle sure isn't going to have this "Installation disk" I tried the other option. to make a long story short, it didn't work, the only system images that were on the PC were ones from like today and yesterday. So after about another 30-60 mins later of digging through windows 7 stuff to see if there was anything else even resembling a factory reset button. Nope, nothing that I could find. So like any other rational person, I hopped on google to see if there were any forums or tutorials to help me. I did find one interesting lead through the start up menu and holding F8, but that didn't really work either. So, if you've made it this far, thank you, and if you have any ideas on how to help, i'll be on all night. thank you again.

[Enderman]

https://www.howtogeek.com/224342/how-to-clean-install-windows-10/

[emosun]

your main issue is mostly just lack of knowledge on how to reinstall windows and nothing really wrong with windows itself.

36 minutes ago, Mixcader said:

why don't I just give the good ol' PC a good factory reset to clear out all the unwanted files that were left behind when I first received the system

did you actually check and see if the games you were installing were the bulk of data on the machines hard drive? did you check how much space the drive had prior to you messing with it?

37 minutes ago, Mixcader said:

did they not just have a factory reset button back in the windows 7 days?

you normally do this outside the os using the factory reset options before the os loads if its a prebuilt machine

and or you reinstall windows outside the os as well

again this mostly comes down to a lack of knowledge in knowing that what you are attempting to do is done outside the os

a basic tutorial on how to install windows might be more along the line of what you are looking for

[kirashi]

5 hours ago, Mixcader said:

Hello all, recently I've gotten an old gaming PC for Christmas. I just got the chance yesterday to really get on and mess around with it and download steam and some games and all that. But after about my 4th or 5th install I noticed that I was extremely low on storage on the on-board hard drive, so naturally I asked my awesome nerd of a uncle to help me out.

 

He went down into his nerd cave and came back up and handed me an external hard drive to see if it would help, but alas, it didn't. you see, the on-board hard drive only had a total of 238 GB of storage and the external hard drive my uncle gave me had 111 GB. But then, after i'd suffered through the extreme bottle neck of the download with the old external hard drive, (It was literally only writing at around 2 meg a sec while my download was literally 100 meg) and used up all the storage on there, I came up with a brilliant plan, or so I thought at the time anyways.

 

I thought to myself, why don't I just give the good ol' PC a good factory reset to clear out all the unwanted files that were left behind when I first received the system. so, I started my new journey by first opening up the control panel and looking at what she had to offer, (bear in mind, i'm only really used to windows 10, while the OS on this PC is windows 7) so after a swift click on system and security and then followed by a click on back-up and restore. I was then kindly greeted by a screen that said a windows backup hadn't been set up and that windows couldn't find a backup on the computer.

 

Well, I thought to myself, That isn't really what i'm looking for anyways so I click on the hyperlink looking text below all that that said Recover system settings on your computer. Then, I read through the system restore description, it didn't really seem like what I wanted to do either, did they not just have a factory reset button back in the windows 7 days? Guess us people with windows 8 and above are pretty lucky. But all hope wasn't lost, for I saw another hyperlink looking text that read Advanced recovery methods,

 

Oh, I thought to myself, that's where the factory reset option must be, don't want those old folks accidentally deleting their total of 2 GB of used storage. so with a hasty click I read what came up next. Use a system image that I created earlier to recover my computer, or reinstall windows, now at first I thought that that would be exactly what I wanted, but then I saw what was in parenthesis right next to it. (requires windows installation disc.) So knowing plain well that my uncle sure isn't going to have this "Installation disk" I tried the other option.

 

to make a long story short, it didn't work, the only system images that were on the PC were ones from like today and yesterday. So after about another 30-60 mins later of digging through windows 7 stuff to see if there was anything else even resembling a factory reset button. Nope, nothing that I could find. So like any other rational person, I hopped on google to see if there were any forums or tutorials to help me. I did find one interesting lead through the start up menu and holding F8, but that didn't really work either.

 

So, if you've made it this far, thank you, and if you have any ideas on how to help, i'll be on all night. thank you again.

FTFY -- it's much easier to digest if you use the enter or return key to create paragraphs. It also helps if you list the make & model of computer so we may be able to help get you to the recovery options for said computer. So.... what's the make and exact model number?

 

[-rascal-]

Windows 7 did not have a factory reset option.

What you can really do is reformat the disk, and reinstall Windows 7 (or another OS, like Windows 10) on it.

If you are doing to reinstall Windows, make sure you have the CD / Product Key.

 

By the way, you don't need to use the EXACT disk that came with that particular install of Windows 7.

For an example, if it has Windows 7 Home installed, you can use any Windows 7 Home disk.