XPS 12 - How to Rollback Windows 8.0 after 8.1 if you didn't create a restore point or recovery disk

For those of you XPS 12 users who made the unfortunate decision to update to windows 8.1 without creating restore media to be able to fall back on if you have problems with the Windows 8.1 update, you may have noticed that you are no longer able to do a factory reset to revert your computer back to its factory state in Windows 8.0. This is a huge flaw with the Windows 8.1 upgrade. Dell tech support will tell you that you are out of luck and better off just doing a clean install of your Windows 8 OS with the media that came with your PC. This means manually installing all the drivers and software that came with your machine which can be a headache. I have figured out a workaround that works as long as you still have your recovery partition, even if you reinstalled Windows 8 manually.

If you are considering upgrading, be sure to create a system restore USB drive to fall back on. For those of you who were lazy and didn’t create a backup or recovery option, this post is for you. There may be easier ways to do this, but this is how I managed to do it. Disclaimer: I am NOT a technician, I have no years of IT training and I do NOT work for Dell. I am a regular Joe who spent about 4 hours to figure this out. Use this process at your own risk. It worked for me but I cannot guarantee it will work for you.

You will need:

-          A bootable windows 8 recovery/installation USB or the Dell Windows 8 DVD and a USB external DVD drive to be able to boot from.

-          A USB Drive (external HDD or 16GB thumb drive) or another separate partition on your SSD (not recommended).

How to Recover Windows 8.0 and your Original Factory Settings.

1. Verify that your original Dell/Windows Hidden Recovery Partition (PBR) is intact. You can do this by holding the Windows Key and pressing the letter X and then selecting “Disk Management.” Your recovery partition should be about 7.34 GB.
2. Backup anything you want to save out of Windows 8.1 before proceeding with your restore, your personal files, music, pictures, documents, etc.
3. If your recovery partition is intact, then do not mess with it, resize it or alter it in any way. I found it easier to simply clone or save an image of this partition using Macronium Reflect (it’s free) to image or clone this onto a 16GB or external hard drive, external or even another partition on your SSD if you know what you are doing. If you use your own hard drive, be careful you do NOT over-write your other system partitions in doing this. It is far safer to just use an external media such as a large thumb drive or external hard drive.
   
   Also note that it is important that you do not save this image or the files to your primary C:\OS partition that you want to restore. You will need the recovery image files in a separate location which is why I recommend a USB or an external hard drive.
4. Once you have assigned a drive letter to the clone of the Dell PBR Factory Recovery image you created on your USB or External Hard driver or another partition on your SSD, go ahead and open it in your File Explorer. You will notice that there are two directories in the root folder, one called Preload and the other Dell. The Preload has a Base.SWM file and a Base2.SWM file. These are basically a Windows Image File (.WIM) split into two files and these files contain the original factory image of your drive. Within the Dell and Image Subfolder, there is an Install.SWM and Install2.SWM files which have virtually the same content as the Preload files.
   
   I have not found any distinct differences between using either of these two sets of files since I tried unpacking both of them to separate partitions of an external but I did notice that the Dell folder’s attributes matched a week before my system shipped so I opted for this one. If somebody does figure out the difference between them, let me know.
5. Boot from your USB or Windows 8 Install CD from Dell. Also have your other USB drive/external drive with the recovery files plugged in since you will use these files to reimage your C: drive. You will probably need to press F2 during boot and change your BIOS settings to disable Secure boot and enable the legacy boot option. Once you have done so, reboot with your USB or External DVD drive ready and press F12 to enable boot options. Select your USB or DVD option with WIN8 and boot.
6. Once you arrive at the Windows Installation Screen, it will prompt you for your language. Select “My Language is English” and press Shift F10. This will open up a Command Prompt window. Navigate to the drive and directory you have the recovery files, either the Preload files base and base1.swm or the Dell\Image\install.swm and Install2.swm. You can reformat your C: drive at this point but the safer way to do this is simply apply the factory image over your existing files in Windows 8.1 which will renable the recovery feature to do this properly which is explained in the next steps.
7. This is the tricky part and you need to be careful and precise with your commands. You will be using the Windows 8 Deployment Image and Service Management tool, a command (DISM.EXE) file within the Windows 8 environment to apply your factory image to your C:\ drive. You will enter the following command:
   
   dism /apply-image /imagefile:install.swm /swmfile:install*.swm /index:1 /applydir:c:\
   
   Once you do this, it will take about 10 minutes to unpack these two files into your c:\ directory. Once it is complete, exit out of the command prompt, reboot your computer. Windows 8 will automatically attempt to fix your MBR and the Windows partition. You will find yourself back in Windows 8.0 again with all the dell tools and original software you had but you are not quite done. Remnants of your previous Windows and program file system will remain.
8. From within the Dell Backup and Recovery, go ahead and select a complete factory system reset which will properly reset your machine with the original file and program settings, wiping all your personal data in the process.

Let me know if you have any questions.