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111468
September 6th, 2010 13:00
HELP! AlienRespawn v2 Missing.
Hi,
Does anyone know how to get hold of a copy of AlienRespawn v2? I recently, less than a week ago, bought an M15X which had McAfee Security Centre loaded, this programme caused problems by switching the firewall off at random. I therefore decided that the best way out was to uninstall McAfee and then re-install it. When I removed it, the programme asked for a restart, so let do so. It passed POST then I was just left with a flashing cursor. After 30 mins or so, I decided that I had better switch off and reboot. This gave the same problem, flashing cursor only. I then thought that I would use F12 and do a repair. Wrong! This gave me a 'MBR.ini is missing' error.
I then thought that I had better use the Windows 7 installation disc, and select 'repair'. Wrong again! No such option, the disc just re-installed the generic Windows 7. At this point I thought that I would be able to use the Recovery partition to restore back to the Alienware factory image. Wrong yet again! In order to use the Recovery partition you need the Respawn programme, which was there in windows.old. However it needs it's registry entries to work, which have been wiped.
I have contacted Dell who now say that the AlienRespawn disc is not available for new M15x machines! As this appears to be just a normal programme, why isn't it on the Download & Support site? This should be available for users to download as without it the Recovery partition seems to be utterly useless.
Can someone point me towards somewhere to download this programme from??
Regards,
Julian
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Brasilwill
12 Posts
0
August 28th, 2011 10:00
how do we access that particion? I know my M17xR3 still has 3 partitions, but from Windows System Restore, I can only see the "end points" that were created by windows... Why are there 2 DVDs shipped with this laptop and neither is a respawn DVD. I did not create a respawn DVD because I was testing the system and assumed that I can ALWAYS go back to the factory setting.
daveo643
2 Posts
0
February 3rd, 2012 21:00
Hello, I'm desperately hoping that someone could help me here. I recently purchased an M17x R3; no Respawn DVD was received, but the Recovery partition is present in the original hard drive as received and I even successfully used it to restore back to the factory state once before. But I added an SSD in the empty second drive bay and wanted to use that as my boot drive. Once that was done, in my premature stupidity I formatted what was the C: drive of the original hard drive thinking I would not need the OS files in there (since I had the intention of using the mechanical HDD only to store my data files and use the SSD for boot/OS/Program Files - logical!). But now I can't acccess the Recovery partition anymore!!!
To be clear: The Recovery partition is still there. But I cannot use F8 - Repair Computer and get back to the "Dell Factory Image Recovery" option that I once had.
Thank you,
Dave
P.S.: Why is that that using my service tag I'm told there is no drivers to download???
Brasilwill
12 Posts
0
February 3rd, 2012 22:00
I had something similar happen to me, but it was within 5 days of purchase. I called Alienware support and we had to reinstall everything from scratch and create a image after everything was installed.
They had to do it for me. The guy was remotely connected to my computer for a few hours. If your support/warranty is still active, call them and they might help you.
Good Luck!
daveo643
2 Posts
0
February 4th, 2012 18:00
Through nearly a whole day's reading and waiting programs to run to completion, I was able to find a solution myself.
The key was using imagex.exe, which is a command-line program bundled inside the Windows AIK (Automated Installtion Kit) and using it to restore the image file [Recovery drive letter:]\Dell\Image\Factory.wim
In a nutshell, the procedure was as follows:
- Boot of OS installation DVD (or Windows live USB, whichever you may have)
- Select "Repair Computer"
- Go to Command Prompt
- Note all the drive letter assignments and write them down; you will need them later and you must have them correct otherwise a catastrophic error and data loss could occur.
- Type (without quotes) "diskpart"
- Within diskpart, set up your partition(s) as desired. I'm assuming you have basic skills to work with this... BE CAREFUL NOT TO TOUCH the Recovery partition!!!
- On the disk, partition and volume targeted, you want to assign a desired drive letter (if not already assigned or different from what you want), format and make the partition active
type: assign letter=C
type: format fs=NTFS quick override
type: active
type: exit
- This will take you back to the command prompt.
- Go to the directory [OS installation drive]:\boot
- Type: bootsect /nt60 [target drive letter]: /force
- When done, go to the directory [Recovery drive letter:]\Dell\Image\. Presupposing that you already have imagex.exe residing in the same directory as Factory.wim, type: imagex /apply Factory.wim 1 [target drive letter]: . If imagex is somewhere else (e.g. in a USB stick or burned into a DVD disc or in another location in your hard drive), just enter prefix imagex.exe and Factory.wim with the appropriate paths. Doing this WILL erase all data on the target drive!
-When it's finished, exit the command prompt and reboot. You will likely encounter a failed boot again because the boot record has not been properly set up. Once again, boot off the OS Installation DVD and select "Repair Computer". It should automatically tell you that there is an error in the boot record and will prompt you to fix it. Accept and reboot when finished.
- The system should now boot on the recovered image as it did for me. Advice: make backups of Factory.wim and imagex.exe!
Disclaimers apply. Good luck to all who try this.
Now a copy of imagex.exe lies in the same subdirectory as the above Factory.wim if I never need to do this again (hopefully not in a very long while).