Dell 1545 Will Not Boot Into Recovery Partition

Hi  boogiemunster,

Welcome to the Community,

Follow the steps given in this link below to restore system to Factory settings :

<ADMIN NOTE: Broken link has been removed from this post by Dell>

If you don't find these options on your system,than you may have to use Windows DVD to manually reinstall Windows.

Thank You

Dell uses its own MBR and as you wrote if it is  screwed up (maybe overwritten while trying to reinstall windows from DVD or an MBR-virus) you will loose access to the recovery partition.

There is a link to a webpage that shows up a possibility to recover your system - this link was once posted by ejn63-never tried it myself

smsoftdev-solutions.blogspot.ie/.../how-to-restore-dell-factory-image-when.html

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Nevertheless:

To reinstall windows on an inspirion 1545 from scratch is pretty easy(I have one) and also has several advantages.Honestly this is the best thing to do - Even if you recover the system successfully you will have to install all windows updates like SP1 etc...

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My advice - install from scratch,install all updates,install your friends favourite programs,make a backup using either free Macrium Reflect or Windows-built-in utility and your done with it.That's way better than to restore from an outdated recover partition....

I had already found and attempted to use that link and my guess is imagex is no longer available on the recovery partition because I could not find the application.  Also, I manually copied imagex to the recovery partition, ran the command and it still did not work.  That is why I created my own WINPE boot disk with imagex included and it worked like a charm.

If the factory image is still available, why install from scratch when I can reimage it with the factory image?  Either way, factory image or from scratch, you have to install MS upgrades, patches, all software you installed etc. So your in the same boat either way.  The advantage, on the other hand, of using the Dell image, if available, is that you do not have to worry about locating, downloading and installing hardware drivers that may not be included in the standard Windows 7 DVD.

My vote: Dell factory image, if you have it available.

I will post a link to my WINPE bootable disk, with EASY instructions

You seems to be someone who has some in-depth knowledge otherwise you wouldn't have been able to fix this tricky business with Dell's recovery image - well done.

Gibb99,

It was unbelievable to see the lack of available information online or assistance I received.  Just to know one person succeeded from this post makes me happy. But you are very much correct with your recommendation #1.  Steps 1 - 3 in the instructions I posted is basically saying, go through your drive letters and determine which one is the OS drive,  The last thing you want to do is format the System Recovery partition with your factory image...lol  I would be interested in knowing what the error message was that you got and had to fix with the Repair my Computer, just curious.

My last recommendation to anyone with a factory image available would be to give the system recovery partition a drive letter within Windows, navigate to the factory image drive_letter\dell\image\factory.wim and copy it to another source, like an external hard drive or your online storage.  Why? Because if you delete the recovery partition or if your hard drive goes bad, your factory image would no longer be available.  But as long as you have that image, locally or remotely, you will ALWAYS be able to restore back from it.

Thanks very much! With this guide I managed to restore the factory image to my Inspiron 15R 5520 after an ill-fated attempt to install from a retail cd.

Ill just add some extra info where I had to deviate from the guide a little to get it to work:

1. If you get an error where it cant run the imagex command, make sure you are on the cd you are booting the WINPE image from in command prompt, NOT the X: drive which is a RAM drive. For me I had to run the following command:

F:

imagex.exe /apply c:\dell\image\factory.wim 1 d:

This is because my cd was the F: drive, run through all the drives until you find your cd with imagex.exe on it.

2. When you have successfully imaged the Factory.wim you may get an error on the next bootup, for me it offered no options but a reboot and said contact administrator. To fix this I inserted a retail Windows 7 install disk (this can be obtained from the microsoft digitariver mirror) and chose the "Repair my Computer" option. It scanned for errors and detected a startup error and fixed. I was now in the factory image.

Thanks again and maybe dell could make an emergency disk to streamline this process, lots of people on google seem to have the same problem. (Intact recovery partition but no way of launching into it and restoring the factory image)

Thanks for this! It worked for me.

After searching for half a day  I am greatful that someone posted this.

hey dude 

im having a problem and it seems like you have the answers

my recovery partition is still there and everything is still there just need someone to help me with imagex and where to get it and restore my factory settings

thanx

Everything you need, the winpe disk and instructions, are in my post data 6 Sep 2012 2:34 PM.  Let me know how everything works out for you.

I've just registered on this community just to say that...

boogiemunster, you are a GENIOUS! I was almost giving up on a Dell Inspiron 14R 3060 when I've found this thread. Don't need to say that your instructions was the perfect solution.

Thank you!

Sorry for the delayed response, but when are you getting that error message?  After you have used imagex to deploy your factory OS?

Beer,

Thanks for the kind words!  Genius, very doubtful! But I will take it. Just another <ADMIN NOTE: Profane word removed TOU policy> techy that questions why the OEMs will not help their customers with such simple task!