Windows 8 recovery options

All the HP laptops are shipped with the recovery partition and various recovery options including the option to restore the laptop back to its factory settings. This is especially useful when you are selling your laptop. Even after you have deleted all the personal and business-related files, the new user might still be able to recover some of the files using some data recovery tools.

To avoid this, you should restore the HP laptop back to its factory settings before you sell it to somebody else. Once you finish the factory restore and restart Windows 8, all your data will be wiped out from the laptop forever.

How to restore the HP Windows 8 laptop back to the factory settings

As already mentioned, the recovery partition is already there in the system hard drive. All you have to do is to access it and select one of the recovery options. Here is how you should go about it.

• Remove any external devices and media attached to the laptop and restart the system.
• Go to the ‘Search’ box and type ‘recovery’. From the options, select the ‘Recovery manager’ option. If asked type in your Administrator username and password.
• Go to the ‘I need immediate help’ option and select the ‘Windows recovery environment’ option. To start the process you will be asked to restart Windows 8, press ‘OK’.
• The recovery options will be displayed during the restart. From the ‘Choose an option’ screen, select the ‘Troubleshoot’ option. From the various Troubleshoot options given, select the ‘Recovery Manger’ and choose ‘Windows 8’.
  

          Windows 8 Recovery Manager

• Under the ‘I need immediate help’ menu, select the ‘Minimized Image recovery’ option.  This will launch the Factory Restoration screen.
• You can select the ‘Back up your files first’ option to back up all your files. Remember, once you restore the system back to factory settings, all your data will be lost forever.
• Once the data back up is complete, the HP Recovery Manager wizard will appear. Click ‘Next’ to let the Recovery Manager create a new partition for the system.
• Whenever asked click the ‘Continue’ or ‘OK’ options to let the Recovery Manager install the Windows 8 and other preloaded applications that comes with the HP laptop.

Once the recovery is complete, Windows 8 will start and you will have to enter the Windows 8 set up options.  Your HP laptop is now restored to factory settings.