Installing the Dell Diagnostic Partition

Question

I've been trying to follow the instructions at http://www.goodells.net/dellutility/recreate.htm to install the Dell Diagnostic Partition on a bare drive for my Inspiron E1505.   However, I'm stuck on the step that says 'Make the partition bootable. Boot from a DOS floppy, then ' sys c:' to transfer the system files.'   I tried to make a boot disk using Windows 98 and copying the files to the partition but it doesn't seem to work.   Does anyone have any suggestions for obtaining a DOS boot disk? Better yet, is there a way to use the Dell-provided CDs to boot into DOS and run 'sys c:'?

pcgeek11 · Answer

Did you just copy the files from the floppy or did you do as the instructions stated?   The command you use from a Black DOS screen is this ' sys c '. Just the bold part inside the quote marks, then press the enter key. This will transfer the files and make the C drive bootable. You cannot just copy the files!   pcgeek11

zianchoy · Answer

Good catch.   Since my DOS files will be on a USB drive (my laptop can boot from USB), I'll sys C: after booting via USB, copy in DellDiag, a reboot program, autoexec.bat, and config.sys from USB, run ptedit from the USB drive, cross my fingers, and reboot.

zianchoy · Answer

Apparently, 'sys' is a bad command or file name.   Unsurprisingly, it didn't work when I entered 'sys D:' (my USB boot disk became C: ). Message Edited by zianchoy on 03-28-2007 11:31 AM

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Installing the Dell Diagnostic Partition

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