Factory Image Restore

When I start the PC I see the blue DELL logo in big letters in the middle of the screen but no blue bar with www.dell.com. A Dell technician did bring the PC to the factory settings 15 months ago. Do you think the proprietary boot record could have still been modified? I bought the PC in Canada but currently I reside in Europe. Is it a problem for Dell to ship the product to Europe? Btw, my warrany has expired. Many thanks for the quick response.

MarcelBurger,

The request form for backup discs is for the US only.  You can go to the support site for Euope:

support.euro.dell.com/.../document  

If you click on the French language, there is a link to the French language request form, but every time I click on it, I get a 500 Server error.

You say a Dell technician brought the 1501 to factory settings 15 months ago.  What method did the technician use?  Was it a hard drive replacement and a clean install of XP?  If so, there may not be a recovery partition.

You can check for a recovery partition by going to Control Panel|Administrative Tools|Computer Management.  Click on Storage in the right pane, then click on Disk Management (Local).  How many partitions do you see?  Do you see one labeled Backup?  If you see four partitions, the you may be able to use Dan Goodells DSRFIX program to restore access to the Recovery Parition.  For more information on DSRFIX, see this: www.goodells.net/.../fixes.shtml

I look forward to your reply.

Tony

MarcelBurger,

It appears your system is intact.  The 70Mb partition is the Dell Diagnostics which is accessible by pressing F12 while the Dell logo is on the screen and then selecting Diagnostics function.  The 3.1Gb partition is the Recovery partition, and the 71Gb partition is the Operating System partiton.

I would try shutting the machine completely down between attempts to access the PC Restore by holding down the CTRL and F11 keys.  The timing can be a little tricky.  I usually don't press the CTRL-F11 combo until the progress bar under the Dell logo reaches about 50%.

I will not hurt anything to download the DSRFIX from Dan Goodells site and use it to check the status of the partitions.

Note that Dan gives alternate methods of manually restoring the factory image.  I usually don't use one of those until after I have exhausted all attempts to gain normal access to the partition with CTRL-F11.

Look forward to your reply.

Tony  

Hi all. This is my first post so be gentle. My son has a Studio XPS laptop purchased refurb 3/2010. It had Win 7 - 64 bit. Something happened to the hard drive and I have gone through numerous programs to fix it. In the end nothing worked and I ended up with a Bootmgr error. I got the Win7 CD and reinstalled with the hopes of getting back to the recovery partition and just doing an F8 and a restore. What happened is I now have Win 7 - Starter Edition. I have been told that once you re-install from CD that you loose the option of an original Dell factory installed computer and F8 doesn't work any longer.

I have found something called TestDisk Data Recovery Utility which pulls up the deleted partition that had Win 7 on it and it also shows me the RECOVERY partition. You can drill down into the directories and in my sons case I see a 367,861,525 byte dated 8/13/2009 Winre.WIM file which I copied to a flash drive. Under the Analyze cylinder program I see the original Win7 install which is listed as

Disk /dev/sda - 500 GB / 465 GiB - CHS 60802 255 63

0 1 1 15 254 63 256977 [DelUtility]

16 0 1 4193 254 63 67119570 THIS ONE IS DELETED

16 16 1 1245 62 33 19746816 [RECOVERY] which is empty

   1245 62  34  60801  47 46  956766208  [Mother Ship] THIS ONE IS DELETED

16 0 1 4193 254 63 67119570

   4194 8 39 60801 47 46 909393920

The Deleted [RECOVERY] partition ends at 1245 and the Deleted [MOTHER SHIP] starts at 1245 vs. 1246 so that's probably one reason that partition setup doesn't work. I have tried to re-write a few scenarios but I have been unsuccessful.

After HOURS of trying to find Imagex.exe, (480,640 byte) I used it to reinstall the WINRE file. Once it started I did see progress and thought I had finally fixed his laptop. When only after 3 minutes it said it was done I was suspicious. When I rebooted and asked for a User name and password I used his original and I received a Domain error. (We never had domains setup?)

I reinstalled from the Win 7 disk to have the exact same Starter edition installed. No drivers, no nothing as you might expect. Not even wireless turned on. I can see 3 logical drives. C: which has DIAGS, Program Files, Sources, Users, Windows. E: which has UPGRADE~OS, $UPGDRV$, Windows, Windows.old and Windows.old.001 and D: which was blank and that's where I put the WIM file and imagex. By the way, I did find on the Microsoft site the WINAIK file. I made a CD and when I try and run StartCD it either tells me its not a Win32 program or that I don't have enough memory.

I thought that this would be simple but...

If your RECOVERY partition is empty and/or the file factory.wim file is gone, you're out of luck.  The factory.wim file would be probably between 4 and 6 GB, depending on what software came with the computer.  Winre.wim is a small file containing the Windows Recovery Environment.  It is not your recovery image.

If your recovery options are gone and you still want to restore it to factory-new conditions, you could call Dell and try to obtain the SRDVDs.  There's more info. in my post on the previous page of this thread.

Tom

Hello everyone,

I had a similar issue and I was able to boot a dell inspiron 1545 running vista with BERT PE and use imagex to restore to factory settings.

However, once it finishes it and I reboot it goes to endless boot loop.

I don't have original Vista Installation or Recovery/Repair CD.

Any advice on how to fix this endless loop?

Thanks a lot for your help

The easiest way to fix it is to boot a Vista Installation disc or a Repair disc to run Startup Repair.  Repair discs were available for free from neosmart.net but it appears they are now charging $9.75 for the download.

When it gets into the loop, does pressing F8 give you the Repair Your Computer Menu?  If it does, and you can get the the Dell Factory Image Restore option, sometimes running the restoration process again (from selecting the option) fixes the boot problem.

Tom

zrtom please... neosmart.net Startup Repair software cannot repair a thing and there is no language support for my uk keyboard either. It has acually made matters worse than before. Complete waste of time and money.

What is it you are trying to repair?  The endless boot loop or restoring the factory image or something else?

I am restoring factory image as I type. Support from neosmart sent another, better iso that has done the job. Had to overwrite imagex with waik version mind you but yeah, all's well. This is a helpful too www.goodells.net/.../vistarecovery.shtml

My sincere apology for my earlier outburst...

I have a Studio 1558 laptop & my friend has a Studio 1555 laptop.

My Studio 1558 is not facing any problem right now.

My friend's Studio 1555 (which is out of warranty) is facing the problem.

His hard disk is creating problems.

Dell Diagnostics confirmed an error (code 2000-0146) with his hard drive.

His Windows Vista is not booting.

He doesn't have his Vista media anymore & can't format/reinstall Windows.

Installation of Windows 7 never completes & Windows XP throws up a BSOD.

He also never made any recovery media.

He is now purchasing a new WD 500 GB HDD for his laptop.

So, my basic question is, using my Studio 1558, how can I create a recovery disc (from factory image) from his Studio 1555's hard disk (whose recovery partition is still intact), connected via USB to my 1558 so he may use the factory installation on his new HDD?

A friend of mine had this laptop w/vista and wanted me to restore it to factory settings.

I saw the Recovery partition on D:\ and restored it to factory condition of 2008. Then my friend asked me to install ALL windows updates and I started doing that. While installing updates, all of a sudden there was an error while installing and now laptop says OS is not genuine, I do not see Control Panel, it's outline appears for a brief second and then disappears. just the outline nothing else.

I tried to do a recovery again but it fails this time. Cannot recover to factory settings?

I have the original disks and was wondering if I can reinstall OS from this disk without messing up the Recovery partition. if so then I am planning on re-installing OS, then perhaps using Recovery Partition to put everything back to factory settings with all drivers etc. Then download sp1 and sp2 of vista and install them manually.

Will that work? Any alternate suggestions?

I have the original disks and was wondering if I can reinstall OS from this disk without messing up the Recovery partition.

No you can't however a clean install will run much better than the factory settings particularly if the 2 service packs are manually installed immediately after installation and the latest system drivers are installed in the correct order. See my Windows Reinstallation Guide/A Clean Install of Windows:

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

You can use Dell Backup and Recovery to make factory settings of the new install however I am not sure if it works with Windows Vista:

http://dellwindowsreinstallationguide.com/dell-backup-and-recovery/

I think I got it.

Downloaded vista sp1, installed it. Then was able to see Control Panel etc and the non-genuine MS windows error etc.were gone Then created a pwd for Admin acct, restarted laptop, F8, Dell Factory Image restore and now everything is back to factory settings.

Trust MS to mess everything up. Read that support for base vista version had ended and updates are supported for sp2 and up. So, why when I started windows update from base vista version, did MS start updating machine and crapped all over and left the machine in a un-usable state? only MS knows.

I needed the factory recovery partition because my friends are not that savvy and it helps if they can do the restore on their own when they need to. I'll give them disks to install sp1 and sp2 and some other programs.

Thanks for your assistance.