Factory Restore

When you buy a retail PC it comes with a way to restore it to the way it was when it was delivered or brought home. This can either be an actual disk or a partition on your hard drive. Usually when you have a restore partition there is a piece of software installed on the PC that will let you create disks to restore the restore partition if you need to swap in a new hard disk.

If your PC came with a recovery partition and no restore disks, you can almost always make your own recovery disks to be used in the event of a hard drive crash.

In your programs menu there should be a recovery option or a backup and recovery option under system tools. If your manufacturer has included the program it should be there. This is the HP program but it should be similar to most other manufacturers

After the image is split it will burn it onto either DVD's or CD's. In some cases blu-ray may be used also. The number of disks needed depends on what media you decided to use.

Once these disks are complete you may store them for use. For best results store them in a cool, dry place away from sunlight and use jewel cases. If your hard drive ever needs to be replaced you can run these disks to reinstall the recovery partition on your hard drive so that you can use it in the manner you used the old drive's recovery partition.
Restores will be used when the operating system is damaged beyond easy repair by a virus or when a new drive needs to be swapped in so you can use the computer again. It is the equivalent of a fresh install of Windows, but it is done for you in such a way that is easier and makes sure the software the company installed remains on the PC.
Restores can be accessed by booting off of the disk or by hitting a key during the boot process. You will usually see it listed on the bios splash screen or before the Windows screen.

There are usually 2 types of restores with a factory restore, a destructive restore and a non-destructive restore. 
Destructive restores delete the contents of the drive and re-installs the OS from scratch. This is for recovering from viruses that you couldn't remove by hand

Non-Destructive restore installs Windows on top of itself and leaves the user data intact. This would be used if you removed the virus yourself but the system has been damaged to the point that it is unusable


Running the restores results in a system loaded with new software either just pertaining to the core operating system files (Nondestructive) or new files as a whole(destructive).