Unsolved
This post is more than 5 years old
3 Posts
0
75314
Windows 8 Factory Restore Recovery Partitions
I have a Dell 7520 Inspiron 15R SE
I can no longer restore the factory image which is still intact. I would like to know how i can enable access to my factory image?
I resized my c and D partition. When I intially used Partition Home Wizard the job failed. I then used Easeus Partition Master.
When i used Dell recovery to restore the factory setting it would fail. My computer would then show the ESP and PBR partitions.
I also made the mistake of deleting the 100MB partition that was between my D drive and the recovery partition. What parameters do I need to rebuild this?
I enclose a screenshot of my current partitions.
Thanks
Rich
DELL-Chinmay S
1.8K Posts
0
February 28th, 2013 08:00
Hi Rich,
It appears that the application used to resize the partitions have corrupted the factory image. If you have partitioned / resized hard drive of computer, you might not be able to access the Factory image partition. you might need to format the hard drive and re-install Operating System using (Windows OEM disc) in case there are any issues.
Please reply for further clarifications
alc1
3 Posts
0
March 1st, 2013 08:00
Hi Chinmay,
AFAIK the factory image has not been touched. I see that others have migrated the whole disks to other size disks without losing the factory image. Would it not be some flag in the BCD that indicates where each partition sits?
Thanks
Philip_Yip
7 Technologist
7 Technologist
•
16K Posts
0
March 2nd, 2013 01:00
Its a weakness of the Dell DataSafe internal factory restore partition, it won't work when the size of the partitions has been changed.
For best results you should follow my wiki Windows Reinstallation Guide/A Clean install of Windows using a Dell Windows Reinstallation DVD:
http://philipyip.wordpress.com/dell-community-forums/
If you have created the Dell DataSafe USB it should restore your system to factory partitions if booted from it but will also wipe out your custom partitions.
For the factory settings (see Section 10) attempt to create the USB recovery stick if you haven't already done so; it may or may not work. You should try to make one of these if you haven't already done so. Another thing you may try is restoring to the factory setting using the recovery USB.
Then you may partition your hard drive using EaseUS (Section 4) of the guide.
Finally you may clone your custom partitions using Acronis WD Edition onto a WD external HDD for backup purposes (Section 3) i.e. make your custmised factory settings.
Mary G
4 Operator
4 Operator
•
20.1K Posts
0
March 2nd, 2013 13:00
That small 100mb partition contained the Dell Diagnostics. You can find the online version here: www.dell.com/.../19
alc1
3 Posts
0
March 13th, 2013 04:00
Thanks for all your responses and Philips guide.
Dell UK have supplied a new disc recovery now. I have a few more questions:-
1/ When I install can I delete all existing partitions including factory?
2/ Can I use MBR rather GPT - will Windows 8 still find the lincense key in the bios?
3/ On a separate note I found that the explorer fonts look ugly on win 8 compared to windows 7 despite my other Dell having the same screen resolution - have you experienced this?
Thanks in advance.