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72614
July 7th, 2014 14:00
For what do I need the DellUtility partition?
I searched the forum and didn't find an answer to my question. But I admit I'm new to the forum and may have missed something (or may even post this in the wrong forum).
I got my new 6430u and didn't pay attention to the partitions or how they were layed out on the disk. The laptop came with Win7Pro SP1. MS suggested to update it with about 65 patches. I did. The required reboot didn't succeed. Fortunately I had made a recovery disk prior to installing all the
patches. So I tried to repair, whatever was broken. It didn't work. So I recovered the factory installation. Reboot still didn't work but then I could repair the freshly recovered factory installation. Kind of unexpected but I could boot and the setup of windows started, as expected.
Now I looked at the partitions: DellUtility, RECOVERY and OS. RECOVERY is active and contains the bootmgr. That looked OK. Booting with F8 showed the expected boot menu. Selecting "Repair Your Computer" started Windows from the OS partition. With Google's help I fixed that. Booting with F12 shows the expected menu to run Diagnostics. Selecting them works as far as I can tell. Several tests are executed and shown. Booting (with GRUB on an external usb drive) into the DellUtility partition works: I get a C:\> prompt. But what do I do here? There is no utility, no delldiag or even a dellboot program. There are only four files in that partition: COMMAND.COM, DELLBIO.BIN, DELLRMK.BIN and oobedone.flg. The last file seems to have been created at the time I did the recovery. It contains the text "done".
That partition has partition type 6 and as mentioned the label DellUtility.
It is a primary partition. As there is only one primary left and as I want to install Linux with separate partitions for root and home I would like to get rid of the DellUtility. Before I just continue with try and error I thought I ask. Can I remove it, is this partition used for anything?
ejn63
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July 7th, 2014 15:00
The Dell Utility partition contains the hardware diagnostics - s long as you don't need those, you can remove the partition.
hb-
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July 8th, 2014 13:00
Thanks for the reply. You say it "contains the hardware diagnostics". Is it in one of the four files, or hidden somewhere? How can I start the diagnostics from the command line - the C:\> prompt?
On the other hand, I'm confused. F12 lets me select the hardware diagnostics and they seem to work. But I don't see anything in the DellUtility partition, which looks like diagnostics. To me it seems the diagnostics are implemented in BIOS/UEFI and do not rely on this partition. As I mentioned, this partition was - very likely - created during the recovery process and that may not have copied all the files. I didn't check the original partition, whether it existed at all or whether it contained more files. Can someone with a original factory installation double check what is and should be in this partition?
ejn63
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July 8th, 2014 13:00
Part of the diagnostic utility is embedded into the system board - the extended diagnostics reside on this partition (and the utility writes to files in the partition when used).
For some systems, there is a bootable ISO available with the diagnostics -- for others, it is not. If you decide to try copying the files, be sure you make a bootable CD or DVD disc (or flash drive). The partition IS restored during a full recovery but is present from the factory.
hb-
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July 8th, 2014 14:00
Thanks again for your answer. As you may have guessed, I would really like to keep the diagnostics just in case for some hw problems.
If the "extended diagnostics" are in this partition, where are they and how do I run them from the command line? (And which utility writes into this partition, the one - which should be - on the partition or the one from the system board?) Or can I know from the tests run by the on-board diagnostics that some tests are missing, because they usually are in the DellUtility partition?
I ordered the laptop with the Resource Media (Device drivers and Utilities). That one is not bootable and there are no obvious diagnostics on that DVD.
If the partition was restored, then there were only these three (four?) files in the factory installation. As I said, the recovery I did, didn't correctly set up the system so that I could boot: I had to repair the disk/boot manager. How do I know if everything else was correctly and fully recovered?
Anyway, it seems I should first save the partition, then wipe its content and see whether the on board diagnostics work or tell me that something is missing.