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February 23rd, 2013 09:00
Restore Factory settings
Hello all,
I'm new to the Dell community (and hardware in general) - so go easy on me :)
I purchased a Dell vostro 3460 a while ago with 500GB HDD and 32GB SSD mSATA.
It came with windows 7 professional already installed. (I have the installation disk and several other Dell disks)
I needed to change the OS to linux but i encountered some problems in the installation because of the RAID between the SSD and the HDD so i had to break the RAID. Now, I need to chane back to windows and there is no documentation that i could find on how to restore the RAID. When I posted a question in the microsoft community, they suggested me to restore my laptop to factory settings - This i have never done.
When i bought my laptop, it came with 5 disks:
- Windows 7 professional installation disk
- Resource Media - Device drivers & Utilities
- Resource Media - webcam central
- Application - Fingerprint software
- Application - CyberLink, PowerDVD, Remote Media
How can i restore my laptop to factory settings (and by this re-enabling the use of the mSATA SSD - restoring the RAID) and install windows?
Thanks in advance.
Karthikst
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July 14th, 2013 20:00
Hi,Backup and restoration disk can be done by using DELL DATASAFE Local Backup.
Philip_Yip
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July 14th, 2013 23:00
As you have manually installed the OS the Dell DataSafe internal recovery partition is now defunct and cannot be used to create recovery media or restore to the factory settings.
If on the off-chance you created the Dell DataSafe recovery media before installing Linux then you can use it to restore to the factory settings as mentioned in these videos here:
Factory Settings
If you didn't however you will need to perform a manual clean installation and I have documented this in great detail in my Windows Reinstallation Guide / A Clean install of Windows 7.
You should use Step 1a (opposed to Step 1b and 1c as you have the Dell Windows 7 Reinstallation DVD), Step 7b doesn't apply to this system.
In Step 8 follow the note about changing the SATA operation in the BIOS Setup (I mention the mSATA Drive) then proceed with the Windows installation.
Follow through with the rest of the installation and Step 21 will show you how to configure the mSATA Cache Drive after Windows 7 is installed.
There are some additional technical support videos associated with manual installation but do not cover the installation in as great detail as the Windows Reinstallation Guide and do not mention the mSATA cache drive or SATA operation.
Manual Clean Installation