factory reset problem

Question

Hi i've been looking over the forums and can't find a soulution to my problem, any help would be great.

I have an XPS 625 it used to have vista home premium 64 bit. I upgraded to win 7 64 bit. I have decided to sell this computer and build my own, so I would like to do a factory reset to put vista back onto it so I can use win 7 on my new build. My original recovery image is still on drive D:.

My main problem is that the C:\ and D:\ (recovery) drives don't show up when using the restore utility, I have also tried the command prompt from the windows disk but again the drives are not there.

I think the problem is the raid driver. I got a copy of vista off a friend and tried to re-install. but I't says it's missing a driver for amd ahci raid controller. So i tried to install from windows same problem.

If I can get the C: & D: drives to show up from the command prompt my problems would be solved. Any help will be greatly appreciated.

System Manufacturer    Dell Inc.
System Model    XPS 625
System Type    x64-based PC
Processor    AMD Phenom(tm) 9850 Quad-Core Processor, 2500 Mhz, 4 Core(s), 4 Logical Processor(s)
BIOS Version/Date    Dell Inc. 1.0.2, 17/03/2009
SMBIOS Version    2.5
Windows Directory    C:\Windows
System Directory    C:\Windows\system32
Boot Device    \Device\HarddiskVolume3
Installed Physical Memory (RAM)    4.00 GB
Total Physical Memory    3.99 GB
Available Physical Memory    2.70 GB

Drive    C:
Description    Local Fixed Disk
Compressed    No
File System    NTFS
Size    683.56 GB (733,965,447,168 bytes)
Free Space    542.91 GB (582,943,162,368 bytes)
Volume Name    OS
Volume Serial Number    FED5ADD7

Drive    D:
Description    Local Fixed Disk
Compressed    No
File System    NTFS
Size    15.00 GB (16,106,123,264 bytes)
Free Space    8.07 GB (8,668,340,224 bytes)
Volume Name    RECOVERY
Volume Serial Number    B6DF6C93

Drive    E:
Description    CD-ROM Disc
Drive    F:
Description    Removable Disk
Drive    G:
Description    Removable Disk
Drive    H:
Description    Removable Disk
Drive    I:
Description    Removable Disk

Description    Disk drive
Manufacturer    (Standard disk drives)
Model    Hitachi HDS721075KLA3 SCSI Disk Device
Bytes/Sector    512
Media Loaded    Yes
Media Type    Fixed hard disk
Partitions    3
SCSI Bus    0
SCSI Logical Unit    0
SCSI Port    2
SCSI Target ID    0
Sectors/Track    63
Size    698.64 GB (750,153,761,280 bytes)
Total Cylinders    91,201
Total Sectors    1,465,144,065
Total Tracks    23,256,255
Tracks/Cylinder    255
Partition    Disk #0, Partition #0
Partition Size    78.41 MB (82,220,544 bytes)
Partition Starting Offset    32,256 bytes
Partition    Disk #0, Partition #1
Partition Size    15.00 GB (16,106,127,360 bytes)
Partition Starting Offset    82,837,504 bytes
Partition    Disk #0, Partition #2
Partition Size    683.56 GB (733,965,451,264 bytes)
Partition Starting Offset    16,188,964,864 bytes

jackshack · Answer

Your task will be more difficult if you decided to modify the partition layout when you installed Windows 7.  Assuming that the layout is the same, however, you might be able to perform a manual install using this procedure:  Restoring Dell Factory Image from Windows Recovery Environment.  You will need a Vista DVD.

darren_mccoy · Answer

I did a clean install of windows 7 wiping the c: drive (recovery drive is still there). The problem is when I run the vista disk it can't see the hard disks. I tried just re-installing vista from a spare disk, after loading up, select language etc it stops and says it need a dvd driver lol, I had a look on the dell site but didn't see any drivers for my drives.

the bios can see the Hdd and DVD im able to load the start of the windows disk from dvd but then can go no further.

Just to be clear win 7 loads up fine and i can access all drives.

jackshack · Answer

Was there no Vista DVD shipped with your computer? Dell sometimes includes the SATA drivers on the installation disk that gets shipped with the machine.

If that isn't the case, you can still retrieve the SATA drivers from this page: XPS625 Drivers. If the correct operating system doesn't show at the top of the page just use the arrow to get to the drop down menu and choose the correct one. The SATA driver you need is the first file in that category. The second file is the utility program, while the remainder are firmware updates for certain specific drives. I've never installed Vista, so you are ahead of me there, but I'm told you no longer require a diskette drive to load the driver for the hard drive. You should therefore be able to download and expand the file, then copy the expanded contents to a memory key.

darren_mccoy · Answer

Thanks for the replies, i found the raid driver and all is good yeahhh.   cheers   darren

jackshack · Answer

That's good news!  Best of luck to you.

Windows General

factory reset problem

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