Thanks, I got to the point of trying to obtain imagex or ximage, unfortunately I'm all linux at the moment and cannot get imagex because I cannot authenticate with Microsoft - catch 22.
Is there a MBR from DELL you could post please? A hex dump would be sufficient.
When I received the machine it had 3 partitions. And encrypted one, a small one with Factory.WIM etc and a third with Windows 7 on it. I left the first 2 unchanged and merely lost the Windows 7 partition. I also over wrote the MBR naively thinking that since grub will pass the boot onto it, that it would restore ok. I've set the encrypted partition as the first boot partition, but the boot jumps to the second and boots there. Not sure whether the decrypt for the first is in the MBR or in the second partition. When I boot the partition with Factory.wim, the restoration applications are all running nicely, except they cannot see the Factory.wim file. I am assuming that they are attempting to look up the file using some indirect which booting off DELLs MBR provides. Do you think there is much mileage in chasing the MBR as a possible fix?
ejn63
9 Legend
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87.5K Posts
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June 4th, 2012 05:00
You will need to boot the system from a Windows disc:
smsoftdev-solutions.blogspot.com/.../how-to-restore-dell-factory-image-when.html
tobychaloner
6 Posts
0
June 5th, 2012 03:00
Thanks, I got to the point of trying to obtain imagex or ximage, unfortunately I'm all linux at the moment and cannot get imagex because I cannot authenticate with Microsoft - catch 22.
Is there a MBR from DELL you could post please? A hex dump would be sufficient.
speedstep
9 Legend
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47K Posts
0
June 5th, 2012 08:00
The Dell Datasafe Partition is an ENCRYPTED NTFS partition. There is no factory.WIM file on an unencrypted partition anymore.
In the old days you could use norton Ghost and clone the drive and it would get everything.
NOW if you reformat or change or modify the partition you BREAK the encryption and can never ever again recover.
If you had purchased a 16 gig or larger USB Flash drive and made a Dell Datasafe Full backup it would have made a bootable NTFS formatted
USB Flash drive that could recover everything. If you ignored the Prompts and re did the drive in linux then you are totally hozed fer shure.
tobychaloner
6 Posts
0
June 5th, 2012 12:00
That makes sense.
When I received the machine it had 3 partitions. And encrypted one, a small one with Factory.WIM etc and a third with Windows 7 on it. I left the first 2 unchanged and merely lost the Windows 7 partition. I also over wrote the MBR naively thinking that since grub will pass the boot onto it, that it would restore ok. I've set the encrypted partition as the first boot partition, but the boot jumps to the second and boots there. Not sure whether the decrypt for the first is in the MBR or in the second partition. When I boot the partition with Factory.wim, the restoration applications are all running nicely, except they cannot see the Factory.wim file. I am assuming that they are attempting to look up the file using some indirect which booting off DELLs MBR provides. Do you think there is much mileage in chasing the MBR as a possible fix?
tobychaloner
6 Posts
0
June 7th, 2012 11:00
Don't worry about the MBR, I've got a copy of WAIM and think I can get imagex from it.
tobychaloner
6 Posts
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June 11th, 2012 13:00
Further question:
I've discovered that the DELL WIM files have their file attributes System and Hidden bits set. Can anyone shed any light on this?
tobychaloner
6 Posts
0
June 19th, 2012 13:00
I managed to get Windows AIK downloaded for Windows 7 and get imagex to restore the DELL image. All ok. Many thanks.