SupportAssist deleted my partitions while installing OS Recovery

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@fab7559 wrote:

...Firstly, they told me that support assist os recovery tools is not related in any way with the partitions, which is a lie or a sign of incompetence, and then they asked me to pay 60€ to receive further assistance, since my warranty expired. I declined on principle, since I consider Dell utterly responsible of this mess...

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Hi fab7559:

Did you receive a private message from @NikhilKiroula, who is a member of the Dell SupportAssist Escalation team?

I was told that the installer for the SupportAssist OS Recovery Tools might create a new partition if you close the Dell SupportAssist (DSA) interface or perform a system reboot before the update has finished installing, and I suspect that is what happened on my Inspiron 5584.

The first time DSA v3.9.0 tried to reinstall the SupportAssist OS Recovery Tools v5.4.1.14594 on 05-May-2021 (DSA v3.8.1 had already successfully installed this update on 24-Apr-2021) I received a message saying "We couldn't finish installing SupportAssist OS Recovery. Something went wrong while we were trying to install OS Recovery. Don't worry, we'll keep trying to install the application in the background and then let you know once we've finished."

There was no explicit warning in that message telling me not to close my DSA interface or re-boot my computer. The image above shows the status of the update was "Failed" (i.e, not "In Progress") so I assumed that DSA would simply re-download and install the update the next time that DSA checked for updates. I waited for over an hour but couldn't see any evidence that DSA was trying to finish the failed update so I eventually closed the DSA interface and re-booted my computer. The next time I ran a manual "Get Drivers & Downloads" check for updates with DSA [note that I have all automated background scans disabled in my DSA settings at at Options (gear icon) | Settings | Automate Scans and Optimizations | Scan Your System and Drivers] it once again recommended one available update for the SupportAssist OS Recovery Tools v5.4.1.14594, and while that installation was running that is when I noticed the brief "Wait while we create a partition..." message. There was no prompt asking me if I'd like to proceed or any warning that creating this partition could wipe partitions higher than the C:\ boot drive.  That second installation eventually ran to completion.

I don't have the technical expertise to advise you on the safest way to recover your deleted data, so hopefully someone who has been affected by this problem will provide further details on how they managed to recover at least some of their deleted data.  I know of a few free data recovery utilities like Wondershare Recoverit Free and Piriform's Recuva Free but the free versions of many of these utilities have limitations (e.g., Wondershare Recoverit Free will only recover 100 MB of lost data) and they are really meant to be free trial versions that you can test before deciding to purchase the full product.

I'm also not sure how to advise you regarding the purchase of an extended service warranty from Dell, but under these unusual circumstances I think it's terrible that Dell Support is holding customers hostage and refusing to help them recover their data just because their service warranty has expired. I allowed my own Dell service warranty to expire because I found the support from DELL-Cares was horrible - there was no continuity in service for support tickets and I constantly received conflicting information and advice from different support reps. If you have a local computer repair shop that offers a data recovery service you might want to phone them and ask what they would charge before you pay Dell for an extended warranty.

This won't be any help to you now, but for future reference just note that I regularly back up all my personal data to a removable USB backup drive using a free utility called Karen's Replicator. I also use Macrium Reflect Free to create the occasional full disk image of my entire hard drive that I save on the same removable USB backup drive, and I created a bootable USB emergency rescue media with Macrium that I can use to boot my computer and re-image my entire hard drive to an earlier date if disaster ever strikes.
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64-bit Win 10 Pro v20H2 build 19042.985 * Firefox v88.0.1 * Microsoft Defender v4.18.2104.14 * Malwarebytes Premium v4.3.0.98-1.0.1292 * Dell SupportAssist v3.9.1.245 * Dell SupportAssist Remediation v5.4.1.14954 * Dell Update v4.2.0 * Macrium Reflect Free v7.3.5925 * Karen's Replicator v3.7.6.
Dell Inspiron 15 5584, Intel i5-8265U CPU, 8 GB RAM, Toshiba KBG40ZNS256G 256 GB NVMe SSD, Intel UHD Graphics 620

Thank you again Imacri.

I was not contacted by NikhilKiroula, neither I was contacted back by the italian assistance.

My experience was quite different by the way. I think that SupportAssist OS Recovery was successful in his installation. However, I left my laptop unused for a couple of days, as it was enough to use the desktop in the office and, for the first time in months, I didn't need to take any more work home.

When I switched it on this saturday, I saw a black screen performing some sort of operation with a white progress bar.
I don't know exactly what it said, since it was written in russian for unknown reason, I guess that this is another bug of that nice piece of software (my laptop is not configured in russian, but I had to install the language pack a couple of years ago). I don't speak fluent russian, but I can definetely confirm that that procedure was related to SupportAssist OS Recovery.
Anyway, I left the laptop finish his business without staying there to stare to the progress bar, and when I was back I immediately noticed that the partition disappeared.

Thank you for your suggestions, but I'm not going to some local repair shop to ask them to do something that Dell is supposed to do. Furthermore, data recovery is something that really gets charged a lot (a large large lot), and I'd rather do it myself if Dell will not accept its responsabilities; I prefer to save that money for a lawyer. Starting tomorrow, I will try to find if someone in my department has a license for those software programs.

By the way, I don't understand Dell's policy at all, do you? The products and services they offer are fully replaceable with other brands' products, they really should focus on customer service to build loyalty, they are not Apple..
I mean, my laptop is near the end of its life, I will never buy another Dell after I saw their incompetence and lack of support.
Instead, I do will tell everybody I know to stay away from Dell whenever they need something.

I'm also considering further actions, they really damaged me.

Has anyone seen a recent change in the behavior of the Dell SupportAssist OS Recovery Tools (a.k.a. Dell SupportAssist Remediation) and/or the System Repair feature in SupportAssist? Dell employee NikhilKiroula posted on 15-Jul-2021 in DELLKaren's thread Problems with SupportAssist 3.10.0.47 and stated that "We have removed System Repair settings from SA from 3.9.2 release onwards due to some major issue with SA OS Recovery tool during partitioning process".

I was updated to Dell SupportAssist v3.10.0.47 on 12-Jul-2021.  When I open the Support Assist OS Recovery Tools settings manager at Control Panel | System and Security | Support Assist OS Recovery Tools I currently see the message "This feature is temporarily unavailable. Feature controls and settings will return when service is back online".

However, I'm not sure if the message above is currently the "expected" message for users who had System Repair enabled in Support Assist v3.9.2 or higher, because I DISABLED System Repair in my SupportAssist settings [Options (gear icon) | Settings | System Repair] and then DISABLED my Dell SupportAssist Remediation service (Start | Windows Administrative Tools | Services | Dell SupportAssist Remediation) back on 09-May-2021 because of the serious bugs that have been reported for SupportAssist OS Recovery Tools v5.4.1.14954.

TreeSize Free confirms that no new Dell system repair points (snapshots) have been created in my hidden folder C:\ProgramData\Dell\SARemediation\SystemRepair since 09-May-2021, but there have been files created in other hidden subfolders like C:\ProgramData\Dell\SARemediation\log, C:\ProgramData\Dell\SARemediation\plugin and C:\ProgramData\Dell\SARemediation\PartitionFinder as recently as today.

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64-bit Win 10 Pro v20H2 build 19042.1052 * Firefox v90.0.0 * Microsoft Defender v4.18.2106.6 * Malwarebytes Premium v4.4.2.123-1.0.1358 * Dell SupportAssist v3.10.0.47 * Dell SupportAssist Remediation v5.4.1.14954 * Dell Update v4.2.1 * Macrium Reflect Free v7.3.5925 * TreeSize Free Portable v4.5.0
Dell Inspiron 15 5584, Intel i5-8265U CPU, 8 GB RAM, Toshiba KBG40ZNS256G 256 GB NVMe SSD, Intel UHD Graphics 620