How to restore to factory settings - HP Pavilion a1010n

[snickersnake]

I am supposed to be able to restore this PC to the factory settings that are stored somewhere on the hard drive.  It did not come with setup disks.  I tried to make a set of recovery disks but after 15 hours, I stopped it.  All I want to do is return this to the factory settings, wiping out everything that has been added or updated since this PC was purchased.

I tried using the wizard to do this.  It gave me warnings, stating that it was a destructive system recovery, etc.  I said okay and it went through the process.  When it was done, I went through the setting up of Windows, just like you would with a new PC.  But when it came up into Windows, I saw that it only did it part of the way.  It didn't remove any of the applications like it said it would and the data was untouched.

I went through the wizard again and saw that there were no selections for anything more 'destructive' than the reset/restore that I had performed.  How do I do a full system wipeout and restore to the factory settings using the stored settings that are on the hard drive?  This is a Pavilion a1010n with Windows XP.  Thanks for your help.

[Mumbodog]

See this document, see the section "Recovering during startup"

http://h10025.www1.hp.com/ewfrf/wc/document?docname=bph07145&tmp_task=solveCategory&lc=en&dlc=en&cc=...

Here are some other Recovery documents for your system

http://h10025.www1.hp.com/ewfrf/wc/documentSubCategory?tmp_rule=48998&tmp_task=solveCategory&lc=en&d...

All your Documents for that system

http://h10025.www1.hp.com/ewfrf/wc/product?product=459879&lc=en&cc=us&dlc=en&submit.y=0&submit.x=0&l...

[snickersnake]

Thanks, and the first link you gave me were the instructions I followed (I didn't find any different information on the rest of the links).  I guess I will try it again, but the problem was that I chose Advanced, and Destructive Recovery, and it went through the whole Windows installation, so I thought it worked.  But when it brought the computer up into Windows, all the applications and data were still there.  I will try it again and come back if it happens again.