Restoring to factory settings after replacing original hard drive?

[ak560]

Hi everyone,

The original hard drive from my ThinkCentre A52 failed a while ago, and so I had it replaced with another hard drive which had Windows XP Pro installed on it, like the original one did. The new hard drive did not come from Lenovo, so I had to download a number of drivers and programs from the Lenovo website to get it working.

Recently, my computer has been having a few difficult problems, which I was hoping to eliminate by restoring my system to factory settings. However, If I am to restore my system to factory settings, would my new hard drive be completely erased, leaving me with nothing? Or will it at least leave the Windows XP Pro operating system so that I can just download all the necessary drivers again?

I'm asking this because I don't have a recovery CD with Windows XP Pro, and Lenovo told me that they have stoppped making them for my particular system. I want to make sure that I don't lose everything if I restore my system.

Thank you

[lead_org Microsoft MVP Contributor]

When you say restoring, do you mean restoring from a recovery partition? If your hdd is not from a Lenovo ThinkCentre A52 then what you suggest won't work.