Ok, I've read through all the forums on this site, Googled this topic to no end, and exhausted all options while exhausting myself researching this. I am a do-it-all guy at the company I work for- i.e. bicycle mechanic, store manager, customer service rep, manage the point of sale system and maintain network communications between both stores. Recently, the owner was doing some bookkeeping after hours and was experiencing issues accessing his email, and in the process "searched" for a customer service number to call with his questions. Little did he know he was connected to someone who wanted "access" to his computer-- but of course this was needed to fix the problem. Yeah, RED FLAG, BOSSMAN! Long story short, they did some damage and got a lot personal info- as well as accessed the rest of the PC's/Laptops on the network. There is one laptop, an HP, that wasn't used much and I did a factory restore on it via the "restore" partition on the HDD. After installing a third-party firewall and rebooting, the firewall caught a program that was trying to access the internet right away. My guess is that the restore was anticipated by the hackers and they placed a root-kit in the restore partition that loaded itself automatically when the computer was restored. May or may not be possibe, I couldn't tell you since the restore partition is protected and isn't accessible within windows even though the drive is mounted. He went and bought another laptop just like it :( and wants to use it. Since, the security has been beefed up on the network. My question is, is there a way to have windows load WITHOUT mounting the "restore" partition? Any help would be appreciated as this is just another "detail" I'm trying to cover in the security of the system. Thanks in advance for any help or advice offered. Kenny

To delete the restore partion you can use the Windows 7 media (if you have it) and you can delete partions during the clean installation. Make sure if you do this you have your windows 7 product key.Mark D. Albin IT Master Services www.itmasterservice.com (775) 229-4254

To delete the restore partion you can use the Windows 7 media (if you have it) and you can delete partions during the clean installation. Make sure if you do this you have your windows 7 product key.Mark D. Albin IT Master Services www.itmasterservice.com (775) 229-4254