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Laptop recovery disc

juliasdream
Grafter
Posts: 260
Registered: ‎09-06-2007

Laptop recovery disc

Can anyone help out?
I've been given a Packard bell Easynote E4715 laptop wit a dud hard drive
I stuck in a new HD and installed XP using the license key on the bottom
To my suprise it worked fine
I downloaded the all drivers from PB website but firstly cant get the wireless to work and its running very slow
I think restoring factory defaults from a recovery disc would probably be a better solution than the way I did it but that's something I dont have
Is there any chance that someone has one and could send me a copy of it?
I'd send a blank CD and postage
Please send me a private message if you can help
Thanks
9 REPLIES 9
Not applicable

Re: Laptop recovery disc

Actually the way you did it would be the way I would recommend - by getting the drivers from the website, you are assured of getting the most up-to-date versions.
An alternative might be to run Windows Update, choose Custom scan, then check for any hardware drivers that have been updated by MS.
penfold
Aspiring Pro
Posts: 2,280
Thanks: 25
Fixes: 5
Registered: ‎01-08-2007

Re: Laptop recovery disc

i agree.  Recovery discs can be months/years out of date sometimes, and I personally detest them, cant understnd why manufacterers cannot give a Windows Disk and a Drivers Disk. When I redo a system, I usually try and find the drivers from the Manfacterers website, and use them, if not I have found a program that saves drivers from a system to a file, which you can rerun when Windows Reinstalled. 
Regards the slow system, it may be a crappy driver. have you tried uninstalling the drivers and reinstalling 1 by 1, its more than likely some driver issue.  Is the wireless an internal card?  These are usually based on an atheros chipset, and there should be some form of driver on the website. If not, can you get to the card, and get the FCC number of it, and use this in a google search. This worked once for me with a tosh laptop.
Oldjim
Resting Legend
Posts: 38,460
Thanks: 787
Fixes: 63
Registered: ‎15-06-2007

Re: Laptop recovery disc

Follow up question - I assume that to use the laptop windows key you would need to have an OEM CD (assuming we are discussing XP as Vista is totally different).
juliasdream
Grafter
Posts: 260
Registered: ‎09-06-2007

Re: Laptop recovery disc

Yes I am using an OEM CD and its XP SP2
I'm sure I did everything correctly but I cant understand whats causing it to run so slow.
It has 1gb memory
bubbalicious
Grafter
Posts: 174
Registered: ‎26-09-2007

Re: Laptop recovery disc

this might not apply but My brother - in -law has a Packard bell (i'm not sure of the model but I know it is the E-series) and he says they don't need recovery disks, that there is something called 'smartrestore' pre-installed and you can use it to put the laptop back to the state it was bought!!  He found the instructions on the packard bell website.  I don;'t know whether this helps? - good luck!

juliasdream
Grafter
Posts: 260
Registered: ‎09-06-2007

Re: Laptop recovery disc

Quote from: bubbalicious
this might not apply but My brother - in -law has a Packard bell (i'm not sure of the model but I know it is the E-series) and he says they don't need recovery disks, that there is something called 'smartrestore' pre-installed and you can use it to put the laptop back to the state it was bought!!  He found the instructions on the packard bell website.  I don;'t know whether this helps? - good luck!



Thanks, I do know about that but in my case its not the original hard disc
I was given the laptop because it was unwanted and the hard disc was too damaged. I exchanged it with another one
Therefore I dont have access to smartstore
I think that PB will supply a recovery disc for around £50 but I'm not too enthusiastic about paying that in case there are other things wrong.
Hence my request for a copy should someone have one
I was suprised that I was able to install a XP using the license key on the bottom using an OEM disc
I uploaded all the drivers from PB website and it appeared to be ok but I've hardly used it since and its running extremely slow.
I'm puzzled as to why and was hoping a fresh install using a disc may do the trick
shutter
Community Veteran
Posts: 22,206
Thanks: 3,769
Fixes: 65
Registered: ‎06-11-2007

Re: Laptop recovery disc

You say it is running "extremely slow"..... I wonder if this is because you only have the minimum RAM installed...... How much RAM is there installed?  I think I remember someone saying that 512 is the minimum needed to run XP.  So if you only have 256, then it will indeed be slow, as was mine until I installed some more. Now it runs reasonably fast..... well fast enough for me, I don`t do video games etc.
pierre_pierre
Grafter
Posts: 19,757
Thanks: 3
Registered: ‎30-07-2007

Re: Laptop recovery disc

could be even lower
Memory for the EasyNote E (with Intel CPU)
Base memory
    * Size: 128/256/512 MB
    * Type: PC266 DDR SDRAM 200-pin SO-DIMM
Expansion Memory
    * 2 SO-DIMM Slots (1 in use for base memory*)
    * Size: 128/256/512 MB
    * Max. supported: 1 GB (2x 512 MB modules)
    * Type: PC266 (PC2100 / DDR-266) DDR SDRAM 200-pin SO-DIMM
juliasdream
Grafter
Posts: 260
Registered: ‎09-06-2007

Re: Laptop recovery disc

Its a Pentium M with 1gb graphic card
I'm wondering if its not the hard disc. The one I put in was a used one