I am about to be given a Compaq R3000 laptop for nothing. I want to wipe it clean or reset it back to factory settings. Will the oem be partitioned off so that I can just reload it or reset it to factory settings??? I have an acer laptop and all I do with this is press F10 on boot up and re-install from there. Will the compaq be the same or will I need a new copy of XP (thats the oem that is already on it).
It really depends. Newer HPs have a recovery partition (but you must create the recovery disks with the bundled creator and use them instead) Older HPs and Compaqs came with a bundled factory/recovery install cd