Restore your computer without discs or the original OS

If you need to use your recovery partition to go back to factory settings (an option available on most pre-built computers), but didn't make recovery discs and have installed a different operating system, I have your solution!

All you need to do is change the active partition from your OS to the recovery partition, usually C:\ to D:\, so your computer will boot from the recovery partition.

In my case, I had installed XP on a Vista laptop and could no longer access recovery by pressing F11 at the boot screen. So I went to Start > Control Panel > Administrative Tools > Computer Management > Storage > Disk Management, then right clicked on the recovery partition and chose Mark Partition as Active. Then I restarted and the recovery program started automatically.


Change active partition