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Can't access system recovery, Please help.
My computer has became bogged down with alot of un-needed files and programs and i decided to just restore back to factory setting. I have done this in the past with no problems. So i restart my Dell and on the splash screen begin tapping f8, once into the menu i select repair my computer. Then it as me to select a country which i select US, then is comes up with 5 options, one of which is restore using an image or whatever which i believe is what i have chose before. It has been a while since i have done it so im not really sure. So anyway i select it and it tells me it can not find any factory images or whatever. I have looked and my recovery partition is still there with all the files yet i am totally unable to recover back to my factory settings. I am away this will basically format my drive and have backed up all pictures and things i needed. Can someone please help me and let me know am i doing something wrong here.
My pc is a Dell Dimension e521, i can post further specs if requested. Thanks in advance for any help!
Tim
paryingmantis
4 Posts
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August 11th, 2010 17:00
I wanted to add that I installed windows 7, however the windows recovery drive/partition is Windows Vista. When i installed w7 did that mess it up for me or is there a repair around this. I am having no luck at this what so ever. Thanks again in advance
Jeff Hoffman
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August 11th, 2010 19:00
No need for any more info...... The restore option went out the Window 7 so to speak. The restore partition is gone - unless you have a cloned back up on another drive somewhere.
You can always type in "disk management" in the start box to see if it exsists and is healthy. But it would be a freak accident if it were.
Sorry.
Jeff :emotion-22:
paryingmantis
4 Posts
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August 11th, 2010 19:00
Wanted to add some more info on what i am getting. When restarting my pc and tapping f8 and then going to the repair my computer option and then going to restore from image or whatever it says i get the following error:
Windows cannot find system image files.
Once again i am currently running windows 7 and my recovery partition/drive has vista on it but i want to recover back to it anyway. I looked in the recovery file under the tools tab and found the pcrestore.exe file and tried that from inside windows and it didnt work, i then restarted in dos mode and tried it and would work either. I am totally lost at what else to do. I do not have any disc to use since this was a rented pc which i purchased. The last two times i did a complete restor it worked fine and i am thinking it has something to do with me going from win 7 back to vista but not really sure.
paryingmantis
4 Posts
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August 11th, 2010 20:00
Whe i type in disk management as u suggested i have the following:
OS (C:) Simple Basic NTFS Healthy (System,Boot,Page File, Active,Crash Dump, Primary Partition)
Recovery (D:) SimplE Basic NTFS Healthy ( Primary Partition)
Am i still out of luck? Also i should probally say that a friend of mine installed win 7 on my drive and its not geneuine and i cant really afford to buy the product key at this time and am getting tired of the validate your software msgs.
Jeff Hoffman
881 Posts
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August 11th, 2010 21:00
I have to be straight with you..... Neither I or most other folks will be party to illegal software. You are on your own there. After everything that you have tried I would say that the retore option is not going to work for you.
I am one of those guys that stays up to the wee hours trying to work out problems. So if it were me I would try all the options again just to be sure one way or the other. There just isn't a majic cure for this one!
Jeff
Cherry.King
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November 1st, 2010 17:00