Hard drive question. How to after the hard drive is installed.?

Okay. some years back when I didn't really care about computer repair. I had a Dell desktop computer. The hard drive went bad. It was under warranty. A dell technician came to my house and put me a new hard drive in. When he got it installed he hit one key on the keyboard and it starting loading windows. He said it would probably take about an hour an the computer would stop and restart several times. Which it did. Now what I would like to know, is what key did he hit, and how did he do that. Thanks to anyone that can give an answer and the best answer will get 10 points

Anonymous2012-06-04T03:16:11Z

Favorite Answer

If he put in a new hard drive, he must have brought one with Dell's OPK (pre-installation disk) already installed on it. This would have had the drivers and recovery partition already on it. Then, at your house, he would probably only have to press one or two keys to begin the install of the OS from another disk.
It would be the key to open up boot choices, then an up/down key to select the CD-ROM and ENTER.

Anonymous2012-06-04T11:28:27Z

Gosh, I think it's the brand of choice, as I have had 3 different ones...My first was a Dell, the second was a Toshiba, and the third I now have is a Gateway...Each had their own lock key to start the Windows loading...The Toshiba was an "0" as in zero...And this Gateway is F11...I forgot the way Dell went...
Have a superior day!

Anonymous2012-06-04T01:13:28Z

He used the restore partition that was on the drive to start up the windows install.
He hit more than one key you just didn't notice.

This can be done on most Dells and other Mfrs like HP. They include a system recovery partition so that it can be easily restored to the same condition as when it was new.
It also is the best way to get rid of viruses. Just save all your files first or they will be deleted.

john2012-06-04T01:08:55Z

hold control and hit f11 on startup