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Inspiron 531 question - guru's needed
Hi, I'm a starving student who saved and saved to get a refurbed inspiron 531. It comes with Windows Home Basic. I didn't care as I don't really mess with the UI anyhow. I always set everything on minimal. I've found some information about reverting back to XP of which I have a full academic edition of sp2. I need to go back to xp because another 79$ to upgrade to premium is ridiculous for me since I have xp, and well, I'm broke. So here goes my question. I'm going to attempt to get xp running. If for some reason, drivers or whatever I'm not successful, will the discs included with the new inspiron desktops allow a full restore if I have formatted the drive? I know that dell has a hidden partition that I would probably get rid of during the xp install. I just want to know ahead of time, can I brink the harddrive back exactly like it shipped should I be unsuccessful with my attempt at xp. Thanks so much! Message Edited by episodic on 09-10-2007 05:49 PM
Message Edited by episodic on 09-10-2007 07:02 PM
Message Edited by episodic on 09-10-2007 07:02 PM
- It will be an experiment, you can install XP but there may be a real hunt involed in finding drivers that will work in XP.Some are reporting that some Vista drivers will install and work in XP.Can you do me a big favor and enter the bios and tell me what options are available in the "Integrated peripherals" section?
- On a Vista pc i have worked with recently there is a unhidden partition (d: on this particular pc) which is called recovery.
There are various folders put here by Dell - a few to mention are a tools folder which contains a file called imagex.exe - there is also a folder called Dell which in turn contains a folder called image, inside this there is a file called factory.wim
Do you have the same setup??
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Posted September 10th, 2007 22:00