how to restore my acer 5735z to factory settings

[maryca]

I was given a acer 5735z and at first it came on now,my brother said he had a problem with viruses and l said l could clear it so he gave it to me. At first it was saying that the harddrive is not registering and the computer could not automatically fix it and l have tried everything in my knowledge to get it working with no success. There is a program called pc confidential which won't work either l need to reset it to its factory settings.
Help!

 

[Phillip Corcoran]

There is no point in trying to perform a factory restore or indeed anything else until you've verified that the hard drive is okay (since mention was made of the hard drive "not registering", it may have failed).

You'll need to make a CD containing the drive maker's diagnostic software for DOS, then boot the laptop from it. The links are here: http://www.tacktech.com/display.cfm?ttid=287