I have an Acer Aspire 5100 laptop running Windows Vista Home Premium. I want to restore factory settings so that it's like it was when I first bought it. Can anyone tell me how to do that, or direct me to a place that will tell me?

Do you have the CD that came with your computer?
It usually has the company name on it and what not.

You need that CD in order to reset your computer to the factory settings.

Some computers don't come with CD's. Mine didn't. You should always make a backup after you get the computer.

You can actually backup your current files, then manually reset your computer by going to Start>All Programs>Accessories>Ease of Access>System Recovery. It's what I'm about to do.

You should be able to contact the company and I'm sure they'll tell you how to do it.

Okay, to sum it all up:

1.) Computer did not come with a disk.
2.) I was too stupid to make a backup when I got the computer.
3.) Tried Rayo's method. I don't have the Ease of Access option under Accessories, and my Ease of Access doesn't have the system recovery option.

Also....I'm running Vista.

do you have a warrenty on your computer?

Not really....I barely had enough to buy the computer, let alone pay an extra $200 for warranty.

ok nevermind i was going to refer to destructive method...

When you're turning on your computer, it should give you two options. To press 2 keys, like F12 oand some other key. You can choose restore factory defaults, that might work.
I'm not sure, never tried it.

That isn't it, The two options are to go into the bios settings, which doesn't have anything to do with the factory settings, and the other is to choose your boot device.

Don't know how to do a full factory reset without the CD. Probably contacting the company would be best.