Dell OS Recovery Tool "Recovery Image Currently Unavailable"

Imagine losing several years of data and work one day - horrible experience - and then having to jump through a bunch of hoops just to get back to factory reset. Worst day made worse. DELL CARES

Wow:

Thank you for the information. Our records indicate that your system warranty has expired. One of the community users may reach out to you in some time.

For assistance, you could reach out to our support team at:

1-800-288-4410 – Fee-based out-of-warranty support (7 AM -12 AM CST)

1-866-795-5597 – Fee-based software support (24/7)

No kidding DELL, that's why I am here. Brilliant detective work. Maybe this time would be better spent fixing recovery images? But, that presumes that those recovery images are broken, and not just paywalled if you're out of warranty.

Imagine having to pay $40 to factory reset your laptop. By yourself. Using provided tools. Taking nobodies time but your own.

I am betting that, if I did pay that $40, I would get a tech on, who would give me a link to download the recovery image, set me off on installing it, and that's it. $40 to get the recovery image for a product I own.

Imagine having to post on a community forum just to get some basic level of support for an issue with a provided support tool because the "support" line only knows how to send you to paid warranty service.

Inspirons don't come with Recovery Image that you can download.

Only the business-class PCs do as far as I know. And even that may have changed since I haven't bought a new Dell Latitude recently.

You were suppose to create your own recovery image when you first booted up and did all of the Windows updates?

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Good to know - maybe it would be helpful if Dell said that, I dunno, on the support page? Save me a lot of wasted time? 

Regardless of "creating a recovery image" - I shouldn't have to create an image to restore to factory defaults. I have had many dell laptops, and this is the first one I got that didn't have restore CD's in the box. So, I assumed that that would be via online delivery. Or perhaps a secondary partition containing restore material that tools could access. 

@monkeyone76 

Join the 21st century.

There haven't been Windows DVDs included with Dell PCs in at least 7 years.

I don't know where you have been but when I got my 3(!) Dell PCs, the Dell software kept nagging me to create backup USB flash drives.

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Maybe you missed the part where I said I understood that I wouldn't get CD/DVD any more (note: when you go into a store and buy software, you still get CD/DVD. They didn't just stop existing.) As I said: online delivery of OEM restore images, or a separate partition with installation media (which Dell also did at some point) would have worked fine. There's no access to -either-. Do you think that there's some Dell tech manually installing Win10, then drivers, then apps, etc? No, they have OEM installation images. They have OEM installation images that are automatically duplicated onto drives, in an assembly line. Those should be provided to customers, you know, like that have been for the last 30 years of Dell's existence. 

Finally: would have been great if I got nagged to create a USB recovery stick - never happened. Regardless, that has nothing to do with Dell not providing OEM restore images. I *know* I didn't create a restore - I am not calling out Dell for not magically having a backup of my data etc, I am complaining that I can't easily restore to factory default. AND complaining that IF there is some path to do a factory reset like that, it's behind a paywall: pay for "warranty service". 

@monkeyone76 

There most certainly is a recovery partition which is not the same as Recovery Image.

Whether that recovery partition exists now is anybody's guess since we have no clue what you did to your laptop.

In addition, re-installing OS on a failing hard drive is pointless exercise.