Location of Dell Diagnostics

Question

Hi all. I have to admit that I am stumped on this one. I cannot figure out where the Dell Diagnostics are located on my system. A little background: I've been trying to help a fellow poster with an issue and wanted him to use the Dell Diagnostics. However, due to a hard drive reinstall the Diagnostics are not available on his system. Yes, I'm aware that it is possible to make a bootable CD with floppy support or use the Resource CD to run the Diagnostics but isn't there a way to reinstall the Diagnostics back on the system in order to be able to use the key to access them? It seems strange to me that there would be no easy way to do this considering that a function key has been designated just to run the Diagnostics.

That's the lead-in to my question about my system. I'm running Vista Home Premium and the Diagnostics run fine using . However, I have no idea where the delldiag.* programs are located on the system. I've looked through every place that I thought they might be with no luck. Obviously they are somewhere otherwise I wouldn't be able to use the function key to run them, right? I can clearly see the delldiag.* programs when I look at my Resource CD but nowhere on the C drive or the D (recovery) partition can I find them. My only thought is that they may be located inside the Factory.wim file on the recovery partition (inside the dell\Image folder) and are somehow activated when the function key is used. As I said, I'm stumped and any help is appreciated.

As a last thought, the poster that I am helping has requested the CDs from Dell and I am hoping that the Resource CD is one of them as that seems to be the one CD that he can't find. When you make the request from Dell do they send all of the CDs that came with the system originally and are they specific to that system? I know they ask for the service tag when you make the request so that is why I am wondering about that. Also the service tag request would seem to indicate that possibly the Dell PC Restore would be included on the Resource CD as well which could be useful if it could also be put back on the system since the hard drive reinstall removed that ability also.

C3PO5 · Answer

Hi

The dell diag is on a small partition at the very start of the hard drive

when the drive is changed it is lost unless you clone it over from the Dell drive !

You can see the partitions on the drive if you go to disk manager there should be 3

but if you have media dir there will be 1 more at the end of the drive !

Like 1 is the diag 2 is Recovery 3 is you OS 4 if you have it is MD !

The f12 key starts the diag partition .

Hope this helps you some .

Good Luck

Davet50 · Answer

Without the hidden partition the C3PO5 mentioned you would have to use the Resoure CD to run the diagnostics program. This is not installed by Dell.

williamkidd · Answer

Thanks for the replies, C3PO5 and Davet50. That also answers the question that I had when I looked at the partitions using Disk Management, namely the reason for that third partition (I don't have a MediaDirect partition). My third partition shows as an EISA Configuration and is 55 Mb. It also has no drive label or file system type listed. From what you've said that is where the Dell Diagnostics are located. It's a shame that there isn't an easy way that the Diagnostics can be reinstalled on the system, something that new computer users wouldn't find intimidating like having an installation program on the Resource CD. What I'm now wondering is why the size of that 'utility partition' is so large, at least in comparision to the cumulative size of the Diagnostic files that can be downloaded from the Drivers and Downloads section. Are there other files inside that partition, such as something that activates the Recovery partition? It seems as though all of the files needed for doing a recovery are on that particular partition. Perhaps that was the smallest size that could be used to make a partition and there is just empty space along with the Diagnostic files. It's been a while since I've used a partition program, such as PartitionMagic, so that answer escapes me at this point.

C3PO5 · Answer

Hi

The size of the Diag partition can be as small as about 10 mgbs up to 50 mgbs it depends

on the size of the hard drive to start with and its kind of a shame that there is just about

7 mgbs of files in that partition to start with !!

And the F8 Recovery starter is programmed into the boot manager for Vista ,

thats why you can hit F8 before windows starts up and use F8 !

Good Luck

Message Edited by C3PO5 on 10-18-2008 03:00 PM

Windows General

Location of Dell Diagnostics

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