"Factory Reset" Laptop

[tedthekidmf]

I got a teachers old laptop with Vista on it and it's filled with teaching material and software and a bunch of anti viruses. (It's overall abused software wise ).
What would be the best option for a "factory reset" (wipe everything but the OS). I don't have any installation disks or any other way to re-install Vista, and I don't want to spend money on Windows 10 (Need a Windows OS for school).

 

[punkncat]

Before putting a lot of effort in, I would likely try to find out what/if that thing will run anything anymore anyway. Vista was a long time ago. Put open source OS on it?

 

[tedthekidmf]

Before putting a lot of effort in, I would likely try to find out what/if that thing will run anything anymore anyway. Vista was a long time ago. Put open source OS on it?

I'll be using it mostly for coding, and I tried running some games that'll likely play when bored & everything runned fine.

 

[USAFRet]

I got a teachers old laptop with Vista on it and it's filled with teaching material and software and a bunch of anti viruses. (It's overall abused software wise ).
What would be the best option for a "factory reset" (wipe everything but the OS). I don't have any installation disks or any other way to re-install Vista, and I don't want to spend money on Windows 10 (Need a Windows OS for school).

You can install and run Win 10 and leave it Unactivated.
$0, until you decide to pay for a valid license.

And you need to wipe everything including the OS. Not 'everything but'.

 

[punkncat]

Given the age of Vista, I am not sure where you would find a disk of the OS. I seem to recall there being issue with not having the "keyed" disk when you try to install with one that isn't the 'come with' version.

I recall having a few desktops that has a utility to burn an image, but being a school box I doubt this option exists. Perhaps boot to BIOS and see if one of the options is a "recovery" utility?

 

[tedthekidmf]

I got a teachers old laptop with Vista on it and it's filled with teaching material and software and a bunch of anti viruses. (It's overall abused software wise ).
What would be the best option for a "factory reset" (wipe everything but the OS). I don't have any installation disks or any other way to re-install Vista, and I don't want to spend money on Windows 10 (Need a Windows OS for school).

You can install and run Win 10 and leave it Unactivated.
$0, until you decide to pay for a valid license.

And you need to wipe everything including the OS. Not 'everything but'.

I'm aware that you can't wipe "everything but", but I didn't know that the "demo" of Windows 10 was infinite. This is exactly what I needed. Thanks

 

[USAFRet]

I'm aware that you can't wipe "everything but", but I didn't know that the "demo" of Windows 10 was infinite. This is exactly what I needed. Thanks

I have a long running test of exactly this.
Win 10, installed on Dec 8 2016 in a VirtualBox VM. Left Unactivated.
18 months, runs just like it did on Day 1.