re: Help! Blue screen of death on my laptop...

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don't think this laptop came with an start up disc.
Which I thought was kinda weird

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It's basically standard to put the creation of the recovery disk/drive onto the user at this point.


There's a product key on the laptop somewhere for Windows. Find it. Write the key down. Go here, download the .iso for Windows 8/8.1, burn it to a DVD or USB drive (can find you instructions if you need them), put that in the laptop's DVD/USB slot and boot into recovery mode from there. You'll probably be able to just do a "refresh" of the system, which will uninstall all programs since you've last made a backup (so probably a factory reset, almost) BUT a really cool feature is that it will place a notepad document on your desktop with the names of every program it has uninstalled. Your files should be untouched.

ETA:

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Guess I have to call the Microsoft help desk.

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That will be a waste of your time until you've tried the above in this post. And it will probably be unnecessary once you've made the recovery disk. This process is very simple if you have the disk.


PSA to everyone with a Windows computer post 2008 or so: Google "How do I make a recovery disk for Windows (vista/7/8/8.1)?" and follow the instructions to the T. Place that disk somewhere safe. I've gone 10 years on a machine without having to use it before, I've gone as short as six weeks without having to reuse it before.

The same kind of applies to those of you running Mac OS X pre-Lion. If you bought the OS upgrade disk, save it. Don't ever throw it away. It will eventually come in handy, more than likely. I don't believe there's a way to make your own OS X restore disk, though.