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October 3rd, 2015 10:00

cant restore to factory state - problem with Dell Recovery System


i kept  getting erros about toaster.exe and launcher.exe,  Dell recovery system stopped to work and all my old restore points were lost.   then upgraded to windows 10 which added some windows issues. so i decided to re-install everything. i did not create any recovery media prior to that but saved all my personal files.

i have Inspiron 15 N5050 with win7 and 64bit,  the BIOS version A03 (it has an MBR  partition?)

so i followed Dell's guidance, first installed windows 7 from the recovery disk, that installed and updated ok. the drivers installed ok. *** Backup and Recovery was not on my system (i checked no registry keys). so I installed the latest version and it still does not work propertly  - i still keep getting errors and i cant use it.

i also failed to  do a dell restore to the factory state (i did it as described on the dell website, pressed F8 at startup, got into the Troubleshoot menu, then Dell restore and recovery..) i got ‘an error occurred when creating the system partition’ whilst on the ‘preparing your hard drive’ stage, so i couldnt go forward with that. it doesnt repair it either cos of some problem with the partition table (it shows the red cross next to it).

Under Disk Management, i can see 3  systems, none of them has 'Dell' in it:

100MB (Healthy, OEM Partition)

14.65 GB (Healthy, Active, Recovery Partition)

OS (C) 58`GB NTFS (Healthy, Boot, Page File, Crash Dump, Primary Partition)

can anybody tell me if i have still got the Dell internal recovery partition?

how can i  fix it? can i do a clean install of  Dell Backup and Recovery System somehow?

thank you

7 Technologist

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16K Posts

October 3rd, 2015 13:00

As mentioned update your BIOS to A5.

You have used the Windows 7 Reinstallation DVD to manually Reinstall Windows 7 but haven't performed a Clean Reinstall. Because you manually installed your Recovery partition will no longer function. However you haven't deleted the partitions on the hard drive. This means you have a corrupted Recovery Partition and Dell Backup and Recovery hence cannot recreate a new one.

My advice is to Clean Install Windows 7 following the instructions in particular here:

http://dellwindowsreinstallationguide.com/cleaning-up-a-drive-format-vs-secure-wipe-ssd-and-hdd/useofdiskpart/

http://dellwindowsreinstallationguide.com/a-clean-install-of-windows-7/windows-7-installation/

Once Windows 7 has been Clean Installed you can then install the Dell System Drivers in the correct order:

http://dellwindowsreinstallationguide.com/driver-installation/

After proper Clean Installation and Driver Installation you can install Dell Backup and Recovery to make a Pseudo Recovery Partition. See here:

http://dellwindowsreinstallationguide.com/dell-backup-and-recovery-1-9-0-22-windows-10-clean-install/

7 Technologist

 • 

16K Posts

October 13th, 2015 09:00

I would use Clean All personally...

15 Posts

October 3rd, 2015 11:00

yes, i reinstalled windows from the dell windows installation DVD - it was windows 7. i dont want to use windows 10 again and dell says my laptop model is not supported for windows 10. at least windows 7 has lots of fixes  whilst microsoft is still testing windows 10..

15 Posts

October 3rd, 2015 11:00

P.S.

100MB (Healthy, OEM Partition) Free space:100%

14.65 GB (Healthy, Active, Recovery Partition) Free space 100%

OS (C) 581 GB NTFS (Healthy, Boot, Page File, Crash Dump, Primary Partition) Free space 56%

so probably no dell internal recovery partition, as it says 100% free space for the recovery partition?

7 Technologist

 • 

16K Posts

October 3rd, 2015 11:00

First of all update to BIOS A05:

http://downloads.dell.com/FOLDER00799802M/1/N5050A05.EXE

The latest BIOS will help with the upgrade to Windows 10:

http://dellwindowsreinstallationguide.com/updating-the-bios/

Tell me how you reinstalled Windows 7?

Did you use the Dell Windows 7 Reinstallation DVD or did you use a Dell Backup and Recovery - Recovery USB?

15 Posts

October 13th, 2015 04:00

thanks a lot Philip! so do you think I should use DiskPart to delete the corrupted partitions? is it better select CLEAN or CLEAN ALL in my case?

I have read the following about the difference btw them:
'The data on the HDD is not written over using the clean command like it does with the clean all command below. With the clean command, the data on the HDD is only marked as being deleted instead and is only written over when new data is written/saved to the same location on the HDD next.'

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