Dell Reinstallation dvd will repair Vista?

The Vista "reinstallation" DVD is the Operating System disc. 

See THIS

If you ever need to do a complete reinstall, there is a Dell Recovery Partition on your hard drive that is accessed by F8 at initial boot up. 

The Vista DVD you have is a full copy of Vista, just that it is a "Dell OEM Version but the only difference between the Dell OEM Version and any other version is that it must see a Dell BIOS or it won't install.  This is to preculde someone using it on a non-Dell PC.

It is is not " Recovery" DVD or as some PC vendors used to supply Discs that were "recovery" discs and would restore the PC to the original factory condition.  All new PC vendors not use the Recovery partition on the hard drive.

One issue, if you don't completely backup the hard drive including all partitions, (e.g. using a "ghost" program such as Acronis True Image Home to a separate hard drive) and the hard drive fails, you must use the Dell provided Vista DVD and the Utilities disc to manually reinstall.

Also, "think current technology and operating system", not old technology/operating systems.  Although many do not believe it (and have not even tried Vista) it is a better OS and less prone to problems.

"How to create a Vista Repair Disc" 32 and 64 bit.

    http://www.howtogeek.com/howto/windows-vista/how-to-make-a-windows-vista-repair-disk-if-you-dont-have-one/

Where do you get the info that you cannot "Repair" in Vista? This is one of the option that will come up when you boot from the disk and you can follow this link to do a repair.

Thanks for the clarification that the Dell Recovery disc for Vista is a full copy of Vista. That is good, and one thing - among others - that Dell does right (giving you 2 discs for re-installs and drivers, with your computer)! That is something HP does not give you.

Why must you back up the hard drive yourself to return to a pristine computer? Isn't that what the Dell-installed recovery drive is for? I agree it's a good idea to back it up with a program - such as Paragon's Backup program - so that you can create a backup image of your drive with all your programs installed (once you are sure you are up and running in good condtion). But if you want to go back to the way it was when you first got it, isn't that what the D Recovery Partition is for?

I have to disagree with you, though, when you wrote "Also, "think current technology and operating system", not old technology/operating systems.  Although many do not believe it (and have not even tried Vista) it is a better OS and less prone to problems."

Maybe it is THEORETICALLY a better OS, but from most accounts of people I have spoken to or who have posted about it on the net, Vista is prone to many problems - still, even today after being out now for a long time - and is not all that stable. My new Dell has already crashed 4 times in the past week. I may actually have to take it back. Vista Explorer crashed twice when I tried to open up a cd with a bad sector (I did not know it had a bad sector til later), and I keep getting IDT PC audio has stopped" and I don't even know what IDT PC audio is and can't find it on my system! Meanwhile I did a check of system files and found a whole bunch of them were corrupt, although now they seem to have been repaired by the command line procedure for it. And additionally I keep getting "Cannot safely remove" errors on my USB 250gb hard drive even though I have not opened anything at all on it since re-starting and no processes like indexing etc are running on it. This is the most trouble I have ever had with an OS! And from what I read, I'm not alone in that experience. If I could go back to a 64bit XP, I would do it! There is nothing at all about Vista that makes it worth "upgrading" to, imho!

p.s You may want to edit your post above to fix the error in bold:
"All new PC vendors not use the Recovery partition on the hard drive." I assume you meant "now" instead of "not".

"How to create a Vista Repair Disc" 32 and 64 bit.     http://www.howtogeek.com/howto/windows-vista/how-to-make-a-windows-vista-repair-disk-if-you-dont-have-one/

But is this not the same thing as using the Vista Reinstallation" DVD that comes wtih Dell desktops? Because as I understand it now there is no Vista "repair", it's a matter of re-installling using the reinstallation dvd, or booting into System Restore, which may or may not work for you; sometimes you don't have System Restore points that go back far enough.

I just purchased Dell Inspiron 1525. I am running VistaHomePremium. I downloaded service pack 2 and the suddenly my SID was gone from the registry. I tried system prompts "whoami" but it was no use I still couldn't figue it out. I tried system restore  with out luck so I reinstalled the disks that came with it thinking that would solve my problem. It did only after I trialed and errored over a couple days troubleshooting learning how to reinstall all the drivers. Still I wasn't saticfied it was missing some of the things that were originally on it. I then tried F8 repair computer however I do not go to the next  screen where I should be given more options the computer just starts normally. Howcome I am unable to locate  or access this Dell Factory System Restore Partician ? I also have noticed my notebook display is sometimes scewd or the prints is missing its lower half. Today I turned it on and it only displayed 60% picture the rest blank black. I restarted it and it is fine. What could be the cause of the visual problems. I am new to all this so if you do not have any idea please forward this plea for help to the next most computerly inclined. Thank you Michael Giesbrecht

I just purchased Dell Inspiron 1525. I am running VistaHomePremium. I downloaded service pack 2 and the suddenly my SID was gone from the registry. I tried system prompts "whoami" but it was no use I still couldn't figue it out. I tried system restore  with out luck so I reinstalled the disks that came with it thinking that would solve my problem. It did only after I trialed and errored over a couple days troubleshooting learning how to reinstall all the drivers. Still I wasn't saticfied it was missing some of the things that were originally on it. I then tried F8 repair computer however I do not go to the next  screen where I should be given more options the computer just starts normally. Howcome I am unable to locate  or access this Dell Factory System Restore Partician ? I also have noticed my notebook display is sometimes scewd or the prints is missing its lower half. Today I turned it on and it only displayed 60% picture the rest blank black. I restarted it and it is fine. What could be the cause of the visual problems. I am new to all this so if you do not have any idea please forward this plea for help to the next most computerly inclined. Thank you Michael Giesbrecht

Where did you download SP2 as it is not released yet? If you are running a beta or RC edition that may be your issue. And you may be looking at a complete reinstall.

Where do you get the info that you cannot "Repair" in Vista? This is one of the option that will come up when you boot from the disk and you can follow this link to do a repair.

See fireberd's reply above (1st reply to my post) in which he refers me to this link:

http://vistasupport.mvps.org/windows_vista_repair_options.htm

Upon reading that link it says that the Recovery Console is no longer present in Vista. Maybe it's a question of semantics. But it appears that Vista's "repair" option really amounts to a re-installation which is quite different than a "repair". XP had the ability to find out what files were corrupt and then just repair those files or the parts that were bad, not do a whole re-install. God knows why MS got rid of that great option!

Think about this.  If you use the Dell "recovery" partition on the hard drive to backup data and the hard drive fails, your backed up data is lost too, unless you want to pay at least $1000 (usually they charge more) to a hard drive data recovery company to try and recover data from a failed hard drive. 

I do part-time PC support/repair (and as it happens all my clients have other brands, not Dell's) and none of the clients with new or recent PC's have a complete set of backup discs, they all only have the "Recovery" partitions on the hard drives.  That is what I'm basing my comment about "all vendors" on.

But, to be blunt, I get a feeling whatever we say here is not going to satisfy you.  We are non-Dell employee users helping users, but we are not here to listen to Rants about dislikes.

fireberd, I totally agree with you about backing up to a seperate hard drive. I have my recovery partiton backed up to an external drive, and I have a copy of my C drive after first cleaning it up from the pre-loaded software and adding my own software, also imaged and backed up to a seperate hard drive.

I do have a question about that though which was not answered and I would love an answer to it:

Since I shrunk my C drive down to 85 gigs, would the Dell recovery partition still work for the C drive? And would the image I made of the C drive after loading software, also work now that it's been shrunk from 650gigs down to 85 gigs? I'm just not sure how these "images" work. Do they only image the "physical programs" so the amount of leftover empty space does not matter? In other words, as long as the programs I have on there are less than 85 gigs, the image will work, in spite of the fact that when I made the image, it had 650 gigs (with 590 gigs or so of that being empty)?

I did not mean to rant about dislikes, but you set me off with your comment about how great Vista was, and I just felt like responding because I have a different opinion. I did not mean to turn this thread into a "rant about dislikes". So I apologize if I offended or took the thread in an unwelcome direction.

As to yoiur comment "I get a feeling whatever we say here is not going to satisfy you", that is not the case at all.  I do appreciate the help all you folks put in here on these boards and I have been quite satisfied with the help in this thread. Thanks.

you posted in a 5 yr old thread.

This thread is now locked due to age