Wipe a laptop and start afresh without os cd PROBLEMS

[timaye]

I have an old laptop which I wish to start afresh on. I don't have the os disc. I understand I have to format the drive. I have attempted this by booting from the ease us emergency boot disk and trying to select the erase disk option. However this was disabled. Also I tried to do it via the command prompt however when i tried to find out which partition I should format (to make sure I didn't format the the part with os)it only showed the 'c' part , does this mean that the os and the data are all on the same partition? Is there any way I can get around this at all without buying a new version of windows or using the old disc?

Thanks

 

[smorizio]

look at your laptop user guild. if the restore partion is on the laptop there should be a funtion key that you hit at power up to start the restore.if not contact the laptop vendor for a set of disks or look on ebay for a set.

 

[timaye]

@smorizio

Yeah if I hold '0' key it allows me to 'repair windows' but this just lets me choose system restore