08-2019 Inspiron 1501 Vista Factory Restore Problems

Hello,

I am an out of work help desk tech that was given an old Inspiron 1501 with Vista on it by my brother. it was given to him by one of his bosses at his job along with a MacBook. I haven’t looked at the Mac yet but that is a separate story that this needed addressing here.

I am on able to get the Inspiron on to any Wi-Fi public hotspots such as the Barnes and Noble or even at a hospital that my mom was in recently. It connects to the networks and it shows local and Internet access but Internet explorer will not go through. I have taken a look at all the settings I can find and nothing has worked. Since this was not his computer but it was given to him because it was old and the person didn’t want it anymore I have decided to go ahead and perform a restore to factory settings. To use the restore program directly does not work. The program goes to a blank box that simply says error with the OK button and when I click the OK it closes the program. I have tried going through the start up options and I do get to the recovery options but there was a password on it for the administrator account and although I do have the main password for the laptop because it is provided on it as the password and that password does not work. He was not given any disks with it and although there are back ups that were left on the machine I want to go all the way back to factory settings. I know this may be a no-no here as it would probably be on most forms but is there a way to get past the password for that restore program? The restore program I am talking about is when I go through the start up and then F8.

if asking about the password bypassing is a no no please ignore it and let’s try and work on the original question about the restore program simply giving an error box and then closing the program. Has anyone seen this before and what can I do to fix that as I have tried to run the program as administrator and that is what happens when I do that.

Sincerely,

WonderWoman78

Responses(2)

N

nyc10036

5.6K Posts

0

August 14th, 2019 14:00

Being that it was a corporate laptop there may be a BIOS password or some such password that is not a Windows password. They may have forgotten that there was such a password that was set and may not even remember what the password was since Vista was so long ago.

There may not be a restore partition on the hard drive or it may be corrupted.

M

mrumair

1 Message

0

August 14th, 2019 22:00

Dell Factory Image Restore is an Option in the System Recovery Options Menu The Dell Factory Image Restore option allows you to restore your hard drive back to its original factory configuration as when you first ordered it from Dell. This option appears on Dell computers that were originally pre-installed with Windows Vista and does not include computers purchased through the Express Upgrade promotion or computers that were upgraded to Windows Vista from another version of Windows. Notice: It is recommended that you back up your data before restoring your system, as this results in the loss of all user data. For more information about backing up your computer, please refer to Dell Knowledge Base article: How do I back up and restore data in Microsoft® Windows Vista ? Restore the Computer to the Default Factory Configuration Notice: When you restore the computer to the default factory configuration, all data on the C drive is deleted. Before performing this procedure, back up personal files. If you do not back up personal files, the data is lost. Restart the computer. To do this, click Start, click the arrow next to the Lock button, and then click Restart. As the computer restarts, press the F8 key until the Advanced Boot Options menu appears on the screen. Note: You must press F8 before the Windows logo appears on the screen. If you press F8 after the Windows logo appears, the Advanced Boot Options menu does not appear on the screen. If you do not see the Advanced Boot Options menu, restart the computer, and then repeat this step until you see the menu on the screen. Press the (Down Arrow) to select Repair Your Computer on the Advanced Boot Options menu, and then press Enter. Specify the language settings that you want, and then click Next. Log in as a user who has administrative credentials, and then click OK. Click Dell Factory Image Restore. In the Dell Factory Image Restore window, click Next. Click to select the check box for Yes, reformat hard drive and restore system software to factory condition. Click Next. The computer is restored to the default factory configuration. When the restore operation is completed, click Finish to restart the computer.

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