Restore Windows 7 Professional To Factory Settings

[Diante Scharsch]

Ichanged my gateway modem for Xfinity. Home network is good and all computers and smartphones work properly. When I tried to connect my printer I received message that "feature locked by person who set up printer. The message included 1- wireless wizard, protected set-up and advanced settings.

I tried resetting printer by unplugging and waitiing as instructed, the after 3 minutes plugging back into wall socket - no luck. I referred to page 134 of manual. Still frustrated. I did not lock system, but if I can reset to factory default, I am hopeful it will solve my problem

I tried going to the restore. It didn't work. I reviewed the page 134 of the manual. It says turn off printer for 3-4 minutes to reset. That didn't work. However, today I unplugged printer for about 3 hours, then turned it back on and was able to proceedwith setting up as new printer. So I( thank you for your patience and assistance. Have a great week end.

What is non-intuitive is that when you are already on the hp8710 home screen, the last thing one would think would be logical is pushing the bottom left (BL) button four times, even when nothing happens after four times. But if fact, that is what you need to do. Incidentally, this could be non-intuitive by design. However, I would recommend in the directions, that you tell all the frustrated HP8710 owners that you need to push the BL button four times EVEN THOUGH you are already on the home screen.

I have the same issue, I did the factory reset with the support menu after talking to a HP rep. No matter what after any reset it asks for the login and it shows locks on all features cannot do anything, i need this default username and pw. I also cleared all caches including windows cred manager:

Excellent article on how to restore the Network Setting, however the big boondoggle everyone fails to mention is that when a user is on the Home page of the screen, the 'Back' button/icon is not visible. So you're basically tapping a black portion (bottom-left) of the screen where the 'Back' icon would normally show.

Factory Settings or Factory Defaults usually refers to performing a restore or a reset of your computer to its original configuration as it first was when it was purchased.

Restoring a computer to its factory settings will delete all personal files: music, movies, pictures and any installed software applications or drivers that were not included in the original configuration of that computer.

If you have the Windows 7 installation disc available, you can use it to perform a repair of your computer (and attempt to fix potential issues), a restore if System Restore is enabled, or to reinstall Windows 7.

System Restore can restore your computer to an earlier date if it has been enabled and ran correctly, while Startup Repair can attempt to fix any found errors that may prevent you from starting Windows 7

Alternatively, you may also try to refresh your PC by booting into the Advanced Startup option, clicking Troubleshoot -> Reset this PC and then following the instructions on the screen.

Alternatively, you may also try to reset your PC by booting into the Advanced Startup option, clicking Troubleshoot -> Reset this PC and then following the instructions on the screen.

Read more at Windows Recovery Disks.The NeoSmart Support Forums, member-to-member technical support and troubleshooting.Get a discounted price on replacement setup and installation discs: Windows XP, Windows Vista, Windows 7, Windows 8, Windows 10.Applicable SystemsThis Windows-related knowledgebase article applies to the following operating systems:

I've looked for this answer online and have come across the "systemreset -factoryreset" command which works, but it comes up with the prompt asking if I want to keep my files or remove everything, I want to remove everything, but without the prompt.

We are not doing this from any pre-exiting images, and our laptops are running the pre-loaded Windows 10 Pro install, we are just using the in-built Windows 10 "reset this PC" feature as we have no MDM configured. We just want the laptops to be totally reset so they don't contain any company information, we're not bothered about completing the OOBE once they are wiped.

We are trying to accomplish this remotely as our users are all at home, so I need to automate it and have no user involvement in the process, I just want it to factory reset, and bring the laptop up to the off-the-shelf state configuration. We have the facility to push commands and scripts to the laptops so was hoping to do this via powershell.

The systemreset command will show interface to user and it is behavior by design , however if you are able to manage devices using Configuration Manager, you could do it using Full Wipe, take a look at:

-us/mem/configmgr/mdm/deploy-use/wipe-lock-reset-devices

From what I know there is no script to run it in silence mode and wipe system and it is behavior by design, so let say if there is possibility to do so, cybercriminals might run that script and user will lose Windows but it is available in Configuration Manager or Intune, it means PC is being managed by trusted administrator.

$methodname can bei either "doWipeMethod" or "doWipeProtectedMethod". The later one will also wipe all data from the disks, especially if you want to refurbish the devices. The downside is that "doWipeProtectedMethod" can leave some clients (depending on configuration and hardware) in an unbootable state.

Additionally "doWipeMethod" can be canceled by the user (power cycle for example), "doWipeProtectedMethod" cannot be canceled. It automatically resumes after a reboot until done. The higher risk ist worth it most of the time. If you want to be sure that the devices will be in a usable state after the wipe, use "doWipeMethod" instead.

If it is important to fully wipe the data from the disks (i.e. non-recoverable) you should make sure that all disks are bitlocker encrypted. Only with encryption you can be sure that no data is recoverable with this method.

Another way, which you can do remotely and without psexec (group policy for example), would be to create a scheduled task running as SYSTEM and executing the script. You can then execute the task on demand or with a time/date schedule.

The "OEM stuff" is found in C:\Recovery\*. If you remove all contents in this folder before you initiate the device reset, it should restore a clean windows installation without any "OEM stuff". Keep in mind though, that certain driver packages will be migrated to the new installation. Sometimes these can contain additional software packages included in the device driver package (for example audio control panels from the audio driver).

@dretzer I realized the computer I was running it on didn't have a recovery partition so even running the "systemreset -cleanpc" command wasn't working.

Kaseya allows you to run scripts as System - so even though I was running locally in picture - I was trying as System most of the time.

Thanks for the help either way.

yes. thanks. I get less HP stuff restored after a reset if I delete C:\Recevery before, but still some bits I do not want. where is it getting these last bits from that performing a fresh start from intune seems to ignore? I want omit these too

Might have to look into manual cloud reinstall at shift-f10 on first boot on each machine or a bootable USB with an unattended xml to just blow the hard drive away and start again without user interaction.

Your question is not stupid by any means. the basic problem is resetting a computer to factory settings means erasing the hard drive and reinstalling the operating system. When that is done, all content is erased, you cannot selectively erase everything but MS Office. So, the problem at hand is having a backup of the hard drive so you can then erase and install Mac OS X and then restore just MS Office.

Do you have an external hard drive you can use to backup the internal hard drive? If not, that is always a good idea to have so you do not loose your content if the internal drive fails or has to be erased for some reason.

Is there a specific reason you want to restore to factory condition by keep Office on the drive? If this is to sell the iMac, you have to deal with transfer of the MS Office license. If there is a problem you want to clean up then there may be another way to address that issue.

Unfortunately, if you reset a Mac to factory settings, you will lose all the installed applications, including Microsoft Office, and it's not possible to change this. After restoring the iMac to factory settings, you will have to reinstall Microsoft Office.

The reason I wanted to reset it to factory settings is that I have so many things on the iMac I no longer need and have never used (e.g. a lot of programms I installed to help the loud fan noise which in the end I did not use), and I want to wipe everything clean and start anew.

I know there are ways to sweep the computer of files but I read through them, and I find some of them a bit complicated, as I am not sure I would recognise those files which are essential to running the computer.

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