Laptop asking for Boot disk

[buyshirts]

I wanted to reset the laptop to factory settings, as i was taking it over from someone else and wanted a fresh start, i followed the instructions it said it was wiping the data. I clicked finish. Then after a reboot it kept asking for a boot disk. I managed to get to the screen where i had to select a drive for it to boot from i selected the current hard drive but it keeps coming back asking for a boot disk.
I have a rescue disk on a USB could i try and start it from that? the rescue disk was setup on a 64bit version is this going to cause me a problem if the laptop is 32 bit verson?

As you will undoubtably be able to tell im not expert and im fumbling around a bit any help would be most appreciated.
Regards

 

[Phillip Corcoran]

Did you check to make sure the factory recovery partition was intact before proceeding with reset and wiping existing data?

A factory recovery/reset takes on average around an hour or more, is that how long it took up to the point where you clicked 'Finish' ?

 

[buyshirts]

I didn't check but it said it was going to take around an hour and i left it on and went home after about 35 mins and when i came back in the morning it had finished

 

[Phillip Corcoran]

Try running factory restore again, but stay with it or keep checking it for a while in case in any errors come up or it goes belly up at some point - - a bit like watching paint dry I know, but need to know if it actually manages to get through the entire recovery process or if it takes a dump somewhere.

I'm thinking maybe the hard drive is starting to fail, causing incomplete recovery, but don't know yet.
You could always test the hard drive of course, using a boot CD which doesn't need Windows, doesn't even need a fully-functioning hard drive.

 

[buyshirts]

Ok thanks