windows 8.1 recovery problem and install dell backup and recovery software...

This post will disappear shortly because of the not so disguised vulgarity. If you really need help, repost on you own and clearly state the problem. You have hijacked someone else's problem which is frowned upon. Many will ignore you when you do this, as it complicates the situation.

NATAKUC4, I have exactly  the same problem where I see 3 recovery partitions of 500MB, 350MB, 13.99GB and get same ERROR 5.  I have a Dell Inspiron 17R 7720 SE with mSata that has been fantastic since BIOS A16,  I never tried a backup since updating from Win8.0 to 8.1 until today and it just hung.

For the last three years I have been cloning my hard drive rather than using DBR. I went out and bought an identical 1TB HD and cloned it via a bootable(legacy) cloning  DVD created on Partition Master(free edition). The beauty is that the OS and all data is bit for bit identical in one 13 hour clone. My mSATA has corrupted the HD twice in 3 years but it only took 20 minutes to swap hard drives and update the user files on WiFi from my other PC. The 7720 has two HD slots in the motherboard so I can copy twice as fast (3 Gb/sec)through the PCI bus rather than slower USB.  ISRT acceleration has to be off when swapping or it will complain with a BIOS popup due to mSATA RAID 0 mismatch. Two system drives are not allowed  on the 7720 so the spare needs to be disconnected before changing BIOS from Legacy to UEFI or they can both be corrupted!

Use of the third party cloning software to restore Windows has likely given you the factory error 5 (it has probably changed partition sizes slightly). The update from Windows 8.0 to Windows 8.1 via the buggy distribution of the Microsoft Store sometimes also causes problems with Dell Backup and Recovery.

1. No that will make things far worse and most likely prevent your system from booting.

2. It should be static, as mentioned though it does not appear to like the use of third party programs which alter partition sizes or restore.

3. No. You can only rebuild it if you made the recovery media when you got your system and restore from it which will give you day 0 "factory settings". You can make a new recovery partition if you clean install Windows. You can download the Windows 8.1 with Update 1 .iso to clean install. If going down the route of a clean install, I'd remove the mSATA cache drive and insert a mSATA 256-512 GB mSATA cache drive and make a boot drive to directly install Windows 8.1 with Update 1 on.

We haven't hijacked anybody's problem. We happened to find through web searches... and share their misfortune of unfortunately purchasing DEFCTIVE software from Dell...although Cleverbridge seems to actually be the 3rd party vendor for whom DELL takes NO responsibility for their programming errors when selling as a DELL product and service. We have been trying since 11/12/2014 to make this work. This is almost MAY 2015.  We have scheduled times for your engineering team to call back and then waited 1-2 hours past that time with employee's on overtime pay, WAITING AND WAITING. THEN you (Dell) have the AUDACITY to say the case is closed because we weren't available when your technicians call hours and days later... We're tired of trying to make your system work with software you either can't or won't stand behind and it isn't worth the time and effort when it becomes clear this is not a unique problem or uncommon and SYSTEMIC FAILURE ON THE PART OF DELL in their use of defective software and vendors to resolve an issue for over several years!

Thanks Philip for your prompt reply. 

I know that the fault cause is not  due to Partition Master (PM) since I have never used it on the 7720 operating drive.  I only use Partition Master on a non UEFI  computer (Win 7) I have to merge all partitions back into one before doing a quick format on a separate Win 7 laptop I have.  I then  clone  the Dell 17R 7720 system HD onto the clean reformatted single partition spare  drive in Legacy mode using the ISO cloning software  DVD created by PM (using "Advanced" + "Bootable Disk" to create). I know the clone is bit for bit identical since it is verified by the software.  The only difference is the drive serial number which is only important to the mSATA software in the BIOS OpRom pop-up (caused by the Intel I/O Hub Controller chip) to check for drive swaps in case Intel ISRT acceleration was not turned off.  Works flawlessly probably six times now that I have cloned since purchase. I am a retired EE in hardware and software design that is pretty confident  "3rd party software" has nothing to do with my problem!

Basically, what I am hearing is that it is impossible to fix this problem without reinstalling the complete system which can take weeks which I am not willing to do.  My factory install disks are Win 8.0 so I have the extra step of migrating to Win 8.1 which  may still contaminate DB&R. I would not even try until some user posts on here that it worked for them. Cloning is my only backup alternative to avoid wasting all that time.  Obviously, Dell did not do proper testing of DB&R compatibility with Win8.1 before it was released!  In my opinion,  Dell should create a utility that  automatically rebuilds and creates the correct Recovery Partition for Win 8.1, without installing Win 8.1 from scratch, since there are so many users that got caught on this problem! There are a lot of unhappy customers that bought their Dell with Win 8.0 and upgraded to Win 8.1 and have yet to discover why DB&R hangs. I would be surprised if anyone has a Dell computer that has a working DB&R that also migrated from Win 8.0 to Win 8.1.  I invite them to post here so we can find out. 

I can live with this but at least I know the root problem cause now.  Regardless, I  love the performance of this computer and Dell supported me very well through all the BIOS problems I had in the past until BIOS A16.

Thank you again for  helping as I know you are extremely knowledgeable  on this stuff and you have documented some great fixes  on this site that are well appreciated!

Addendum 30Apr15: Philip: I found this link that states many users are finding the Recovery Partition is not properly registered when upgrading Win 8.0 to Win8.1 because of varying  OEM setups.  This solution looks promising but I would not try it with out a 2nd updated cloned drive beside me  and your evaluation. The more I study it the better it looks! I assume the Dell Recovery drive image is the same as the MS Win 8.1 Recovery  drive image but easier to invoke as a Dell DB&R package?

http://blogs.technet.com/b/keithmayer/archive/2013/11/06/windows-8-1-unable-to-quot-copy-recovery-partition-quot-when-building-recovery-drive.aspx

I cloned the drive 30-Apr-2015 and am running on spare with the original as backup on the table if you think it is worth a try.  Took 6.6 hours to clone 1TB drive.

Bill

Bill,

This is great news.  We have been trying to figure out the 'factory 5 error' forever, and knew it happened when something went wrong with the Win8.1 upgrade.  We have evidence that RE was messed up and that DBaR was looking for something it couldn't find.  I was never able to reproduce the error here and could not get hold of a system in a failing state to troubleshoot.

I'll review this with the engineering team and see if this is something applicable to others in a similar situation.  Perhaps we could script a small update to the app to check for this condition and correct it.

Your diligence on the issue is much appreciated.  Am I to understand the Dell Backup and Recovery is working correctly?  Have you verified other functions therein?

Thanks,

Dell Backup and Recovery is working correctly 100%!  Thank goodness! I am the type of guy that can not stand something not working correctly even though "disk cloning", with the spare  cloned 1TB HD stored securely,  is a  far better option and a huge time saver in a disk failure situation. I do not have to re-install all my personal  application software and can be 100% operational within 30 minutes. 

Of course, I could not test Recovery Drive  Restore function but I am sure it will work. I had a look and the USB stick image and the "sources" folder (plus the "boot" & "efi" folders) contained the file  "boot.wim"  with a size of 288,088 KB.  Total size of the stick was 13.8 GB. All the structure was there. I have run out of spare 1 TB drives or I would give it a try to make sure it works and out of curiosity as to completeness (ie  Intel ISRT for the mSATA included?). The recovery image on the USB stick seems to roughly correspond to theHD  partition image size although I am sure there are content differences.

Addendum:  The following is a simple observation.  I updated my DB&R and decided to test by  creating a USB recovery drive with it and I found the image  was somewhat different than the MS Win8.1 generated  version I created initially.  I believe I see some Dell specific  software added like DB&R itself.  The image size is slightly larger of course at 13.92GB.  I am confident all is working properly. Before the fix,  I was not even able to get past the install stage of DB&R. I am sure both recovery drive images will  work except perhaps the Dell version adds some Dell specific features that would have been time consuming to add later on top of the MS version.

Addendum2:  The following is not a huge criticism  since even Microsoft was guilty of this aspect until about four years ago. When I updated to latest DB&R I had a "clean" registry and it ended up being quite messy after the installation, which can slow things down unnecessarily on other applications and boot-up time. Mainly Active X stuff if I remember correctly. Even Microsoft Updates used to ( ~4 years ago) cause some "loose ends" in the registry but now Microsoft obviously  makes sure  all updates  pass CCleaner  registry checks both before and after install. Dell should get on top of this as well since so many users are using the free version of this utility and messing up the registry is not good practice for instilling confidence. Remember, I am retired and in Canada so I have no financial link to any supplier.

Thank you Bill Alsip for finding this fix! I had a terrible time with DB&R. It wouldn't work, couldn't reinstall, couldn't uninstall. Used the REAGENTC program and then installed version 1.8.1.71 and now all is fine! Thanks again!

same problem after recovery failed...now dead in the water with no paddle.  Dell is more than happy to charge me to look at the issue.  Bought desktop and 2 laptops in last 2 years...never again.

This actually worked!!!

Scroll & look for the answer by "Shibby". I tried everything & nothing else worked. Mine is the XPS12 & I'm helping a friend. By following these instructions, I rebooted to the original set-up screen (choose keyboard, etc). Be sure to back up your data first!

http://en.community.dell.com/support-forums/software-os/f/4677/t/19565732

Also, in the instructions, Shibby goes from using diskpart to the next instruction of entering your drive letter (say, F:\)-- but you first need to leave diskpart by typing "exit" (no quotes) & hit enter. Then carry on the rest.

Don't forget: to boot to CD (I used a Win8 repair DVD but any Windows based CD/DVD that gets you to a command prompt will do) you must first go to BIOS>boot>& change from UEFI to Legacy & disable Secure boot. Save & exit. Do the above instructions, then reboot>back to BIOS>change back to UEFI & enable Secure boot. Restart again, & you should get to the set-up Win8 screen.

Cheers & hope this makes sense...I almost gave up!!!

:)

I have an inspiron 15 with harddrive failure. My warranty just ran out this year! How do I get the hard copy of windows 8? It should be free since I've already paid for it.

Is your HDD completely dead?  What is the nature of the failure? Did you create any backup media?

Thanks,

I have a cloned ssd, but it won't boot up. Trying to make the backup media from a second computer that's the same model, operating system,  and harddrive. When I try booting my dell with the new ssd it starts with errors,  and asks for windows 8 disk to fix the problem. I'm thinking the backup /clone was made before the harddrive failure in an external USB case, so it's non bootable.

I tried dell backup and recovery, it states not able to detect  the recovery partition on computer. It's missing or corrupted.  Please use sytem recovery discs to restore. Corrupted invironment. Can dell ship windows 8 recovery disk? 3zv9qx1

LEDUSMC,

I am a software engineer, so I can't answer your question about getting a recovery disk from Dell.  The good news is, you shouldn't need one.  Microsoft will let you download and create one for free.  See link below and let me know how it goes.

http://windows.microsoft.com/en-US/windows-8/create-reset-refresh-media

Thanks,