Restore Windows 7 to factory settings without OEM disk

Hi,

A friend of mine has a rather bad virus that I've given up dealing with. I have backed up all of her files and wished to install a fresh version of the 7 OS, however her laptop did not come with a 7 OEM disk. I hate going through the process of hunting down drivers (and I can never find all of the damn things no matter how hard I try) so I was wondering if there was some feature that 7 provided that would allow me to use the current operating system to perform a fresh OEM install.

Any help is appreciated!

Well, I'm not to sure, but you could always go to the computer's brand website to get the drivers, that's what I did when I installed windows 7 on my desktop. Does she have a recovery disk, because if so it may have her drivers already set up?
Not to sure, but if she has a bad virus you need to go through with new installation and just pry that virus hasn't infected her hard drive or other parts of her computer.

Hi there. Welcome to the forums.

No, that would actually defeat the entire purpose of a clean install anyhow.

Drivers are simple to find. Type the name of the manufacturer into Google and on ya go.

You'll want to wipe the HDD clean with a low level format tool before proceeding to install Windows again. You can install from any Windows 7 DVD and then use the key that is currently on the machine now.

Just another point to consider....
Most laptops come with a recovery partition on the hard drive
When there is a recovery option, you can burn the files onto dvd's or usb drive and format and reinstall the OS from there
I use this feature on my Toshiba laptop and it is very easy to do
Good luck

Trouble is most people forget to do this! It's the first thing I did on my HP desktop once connected to web, registered and got updates.
Joe