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Restore Dell Dimension to original factory settings
Does anyone know of a quick way to do a simple restore to factory EVERYTHING on a Dell Dimension 3000? I want it like it was before I cracked the celophane tape on the Dell box the day it arrived to me. The machine works fine now, but I want to use it as an office computer and it has all of my kids junk accumulated on it over the last year. I read somewhere once before that this is possible, but I can't remember how and can't find it anywhere on the web. It was like a simple 2 step procedure - walk away and come back some time later and its all done! Anyone?
tgsmith
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February 17th, 2006 14:00
Epaxton,
First question is a toughie. As stated, Acronis Trueimage 8 is used by some techs and they report it will maintain the Ctrl-F11 function. Perhaps someone who has used it will see this post and can comment on your specific plan. I know that I tried it with Ghost. Had to use the goodells site procedure to restore Ctrl-F11 function. That was using identical drives. Resizing using Acronis or Partition Magic will probably work. However, one little nagging problem may remain. Windows XP keeps a record of original partition size during setup. My drive is an 80Gb clone of a 40Gb, yet that record still shows parameters for a 40Gb. If I ever have to do a repair installation, I just wonder what will happen.
Second question is a little easier. Once you have your system up and running on the 250Gb and have installed all your programs, you can use Acronis or Ghost imaging software to create an image on an external USB drive or removable media. To restore that image, you simple boot off the Ghost CD for example, select the image source and the partition on your hard drive to which you want the image restored.
Tony