No PC Restore for XP on Latitude laptops?

"Anyone have a better solution than reinstalling XP from the CD, followed by the Dell drivers and utilities, Office 2007, and Adobe?"

If the Restore utility is not available on Latitudes, there is no other choice is there?

http://www.winsupersite.com/showcase/windowsxp_sg_clean.asp

If it's any help to you, this site here was the one I used to help me do my first reinstall of Windows. I like this one as it shows actual screenshots of varoius steps along the way.

Don't panic about performing a new, fresh reinstall of Windows. You'll see it's really not difficult at all and you'll soon see a much smoother running and faster pc too. Seeing as you already have your data backed up makes even more sense now to do a complete reinstall.

I planned ahead when I did my first reinstall too and found all my pertinent drivers beforehand and loaded them onto one of my USB flashdrives and had them all ready to install when I needed them... that made it easier for me...

Good luck..   Fear not; you'll get it done right!!:smileyhappy:

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@creedh wrote:

And does anyone have contact information for expressing my incredible frustration at Dell's decision to leave out such a critical and such an obvious feature as a safe on-board image of the software that shipped with the system originally?  It wouldn't cost them a dime to do so, and it can be a real lifesaver when things go wrong.

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Considering that making PC Restore takes time and most users that get these computers end up wiping the drive anyways ... no it is not critical.

My assumption was that Dell simply transfers a disk image to the laptop anyway, so an image that also contains the PC restore image didn't strike me as much of a hit time-wise.  If that's not the case, I stand corrected on the cost issue, but Dell could simply charge a nominal fee to include the PC Restore image.  Those who are going to reimage their systems wouldn't need to pay for it, but at least it would be available for those of us who don't and it could be a money-maker for Dell.

As for the idea that it's not a critical feature, I'd have to respectfully disagree.  By the time that I finally fix the problem, I will have spent several hours troubleshooting and reinstalling the software, and Dell will have chipped in about half an hour of their technical support time on two chat sessions (the first of which suggested that I use PC Restore in the first place without apparently realizing that Latitudes ship without it.)  Had PC Restore been available (for free or for a fee), that time could have been reduced to maybe 15 minutes; I'd have been a very satisfied customer and Dell would have spent maybe three minutes of customer support time, if that.  I'd point out that my previous laptop, an IBM ThinkPad, had a similar feature (included as a standard feature) that I used successfully. 

As a businessman myself, I can certainly appreciate that Dell doesn't give things away for free, but when a business can greatly improve the customer experience at little or no cost to itself, it should at least make that option available, even if it means the customer is asked to pay for the option.

Creed:  You can create your own restore image, and better yet have it on external media.   The Dell PC Restore is just a specialized implementation of Norton Ghost.  Another popular one is Acronis True Image - actually, I believe Dell offers it as a software option on Latitudes (when I looked it was $41).  I think both also have trial versions. 

Won't help you with your current issue, but seems to me that getting the software to create your own complete backups is a much better option than a one-shot Dell restore on the partition.