chinny22 wrote on 2021-10-26, 10:38:F11 is definitely the right key. I'd bet someone has reinstalled windows of CD and broken the option.
Don't know of any way to g […]
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F11 is definitely the right key. I'd bet someone has reinstalled windows of CD and broken the option.
Don't know of any way to get into the recovery partition. Typically I get rid of them anyway.
By the looks like the system came with Vista Home Premium x32. Not sure I'd be wanting to reinstall that OS anyway
If it was me I'd "find" a copy of plan windows and install off that.
To clarify, this is not ordinarily how I would go about setting up a PC, at least not for myself. I never keep recovery partitions myself either, because they typically only contain bloatware and outdated drivers. Also, yes somebody did install Windows 10 on this PC, but I'm confused as to how that would affect the ability to use the F11 process during boot, as that should be a BIOS process before getting to the OS or even the bootloader, unless the routine for running the F11 process is actually written to the bootloader partition, which doesn't make sense to me, but it seems like that may be the case.
I am not planning on keeping this PC, so before passing it on, I just want to restore it to factory default. I also would never run Vista x86 for myself but that is what this PC was initially running, and it has a key for that OS so I would just rather consume that key for this PC and let whoever ends up with it do what they will with it. I did install Vista x64 but have been having issues getting the LAN driver to work, or the onboard LAN port is just broken. I think I'll install Vista x86 and see if I can get all the drivers to work.
Side rant, it's frustrating when OEMs stop hosting drivers for older systems on their website. I mean I get it, they consume space, but storage space is so cheap nowadays. Just makes it harder to find legit drivers and be sure they are the correct ones.