Hey Everyone, I have a fujitsu siemens v5535 laptop with windows vista pre-installed. I wish to do a fresh install of windows vista and I have the recovery disk and also the driver disks that came with the laptop. If i just insert the recovery disk will this format my hard drive so I can do a clean install? (I have backed up all of my stuff on external hard drive) or do I need to format it myself? Many Thanks.

My guess would be you might have one or two ways. Most newer DVD's do everything. It will boot and copy so as to return to original out of box state. Not sure what that is called recovery or restore. You will know when it boots to the disk though. It ought to warn you or give you more info. The second type if disk is usually just an xp disk. It may not include the OEM apps. Also a third type might exist. It just access a hidden partition on the laptop to restore the information. "Best Practices", Event viewer, host file, perfmon, antivirus, anti-spyware, Live CD's, backups, are in my top 10

well the windows vista sticker is on the bottom of the laptop and i have all the disks thats all i know..... will the recovery/restore disks actually format the hard disk or just restore it?

Hey Pointer7, You should actually be prompted during the reinstallation of vista whether you want to do a fresh reformat or if you want to attempt to repair an existing windows installation. Got a problem? give www.support.com a try

hey, thanks for the replies. i havent tried the disc yet im still having problem backing my stuff up. My friend let me borrow a.... 2.5 enclosed esata brillian ecombo hard drive or something with a usb cable to back the rest of my stuff up on http://www.scan.co.uk/product.aspx?... But when i plug it in via usb windows vista doesnt even detect a thing. nothing at all. any ideas as to why? it doesnt appear in my computer or disk management but the hard drive spins and lights up