[nfbcs] making recovery CD's

[qubit]

Ok, I just paid someone $120 to restore an old laptop to its initial state,
which I thought was kept in a special partition of the disk -- at least that
was the rumor. My laptop came with no recovery CD's, and the guys at Best
Buys said there was a copy of them on the disk for just such emergencies.

I understand that recovery CD'  can only be made once, after which you can't
create them.

I am getting kind of angry at the situation as the guy who did the job won't
answer questions because he doesn't want to divulge his secrets.    But I
want a machine I can use without assistance.  I am in short, being strung
along as he keeps telling me what things will cost and trying to get more
business.

I want to make the recovery CD's from scratch.  Has anyone else done this?
Where do I go to do it? I have looked through a number of menus and dialogs
but haven't found it yet.  I am about to scan through the administrative
tools.

What makes me mad is that the man said he never did restore from that sector
on the disk (if indeed there was one) but installed his own copy of windows.
Who knows where that came from.  I don't have a serial number.  Windows
General Advantage would probably complain about it (if I were to run it,
that is).  Also,  he spent a while getting the right drivers, which added
$40 to the his original quote of $80.

Question: How do those of you who are also blind deal with safe mode when
booting windows? Do you resort to sighted assistance?  (Partial vision
doesn't count... I used to have enough vision to see the screen but now do
not, so I'm looked for a purely nonvisual solution.)
I currently live with my elderly mother who is reasonably tech savvy for
someone her age, but has failing vision and hates when I need any kind of
visual assistance.


Any comments welcome.
Thanks!
--le