express service code application when upgrading to vista

Question

When upgrading to vista or doing a clean install of vista do you lose your express service code info when you click on the express service code icon ? This is what i mean below -   http://img255.imageshack.us/img255/197/02052007233853aq5.jpg Message Edited by george71 on 02-05-2007 11:59 PM

pcgeek11 · Answer

If you wipe the hard drive this fancy display screen will be gone yes... The same information is on the sticker on the bottom of the Notebook or on the back of the Desktop, Tower, etc... This information is in a directory on the hard drive labeled dell...   pcgeek11

george71 · Answer

Hi pcgeek ,so it's gone if you do a clean install but how about if you just do an upgrade will it still be there ?

boppo · Answer

bay wolf's website has a little program to get it back. it might also work for vista.

george71 · Answer

Thanks will go ahead and check it out .. By any chance anybody here that still has the express service code application after doing an upgrade from xp to vista ? Also if you do the upgrade will you still have your ghost image restore ?

Message Edited by george71 on 02-06-2007 08:49 PM

pcgeek11 · Answer

I performed a clean installation of vista, and I still have the little applet that displays the Service Tag etc... It is in the ' dell ' folder in the root of C:. Just save it and write it back to the C:\Dell then make you a shortcut to it.   It isn't needed anyway as the information is on a sticker on the PC somewhere. pcgeek11

george71 · Answer

Ok cool ,that's good to hear..one more question that i had for anyone was if you still have your ghost image and the dell image restore when you press control and f11 after you upgrade from xp to vista ?

pcgeek11 · Answer

I'm afraid that option goes Bye when the MBR ( Master Boot Record ) is rewritten by vista. It went away on me anyway. I'm not sure if the Dell upgrade kit will preserve this feature or not??? I used a full version that I aquired to upgrade my Notebook.   One thing you could do if you wanted to preserve the drive as shipped from the factory, is to use Ghost or Acronis Trueimage to image the entire drive to an external source. ( All three Partitions: Diagnostics, OC, and Restore ). Then under a worse case scenario you could image this back onto the drive then do a Ctrl + F11 to restore to factory.   The Full drive image should also restore the original MBR and the Ctrl + F11 capabilities. I verified this with Acronis True Image and know that it works, I am not sure with Norton Ghost.   pcgeek11

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