Technology Advisor Blog

If you get a severe virus on your computer, or some sort of other system corruption, and it doesn't look like your system will ever work right again, don't panic!  It's possible to recover your system to its original state IF you have all your disks!

We strongly advise all users to keep all the disks that come with their computer, and any purchased software.  Without these disks, recovery is still possible, but more complicated and time consuming.

HP has a great post on their site that walks through options to recover your computer - Looking for Recovery Disks?  All vendors handle things slightly differently, but this gives you a general idea of what to do.  If your computer came with recovery disks, keep them in a safe location.  If the system didn't ship with disks, usually you're instructed to create the recovery disks yourself when you first start up the system.  If you didn't do this, there's still hope.  If your system is still functioning, HP provides a recovery solution on a separate portion of the hard drive that you can access.  If this fails, there's still hope:  you can order recovery disks directly from HP.

As with a lot of things, the best solution is to be prepared in advance.  Take a moment to check that you have all your disks. If we need to do a rebuild for you to get your system back to "new" condition, the process is a LOT faster if you have all the disks.