I know this post is quite old now but did you find a solution to your problem?
I have a Inspiron 17R and have the exact problem where the 2 radio buttons are shaded and I cant click on either of them to create my Recovery media with a DVD in the drive or USB Flash drive connected.
I'm getting worried now if I ever need to restore factory settings I cant do it without buying another copy of Windows 7.
Dell never solved the problem, because it was unsolvable. Instead I did a workaround.
It couldn't be solved because I think the feature to create backup discs just doesn't work with WindowsXP (which my netbook had). If only Dell had acknowledged this early on, and had not provided misleading and unworkable user instructions, it would have save me a lot of wasted time and avoidable grief.
The only workaround (suggested by Dell) was to completely re-install the WindowsXP operating system from scratch (using an external USB DVD drive, as the netbook doesn't have a built-in DVD). This I did but the end result was that I didn't get it back to the original factory-install config, and I now have no Recovery Partition (as it can't be recreated from original OS media).
So although the individual people in the Dell support call centre tried to be helpful they did not have sufficient product knowledge about Dell factory configurations.
chooie
1 Message
0
August 12th, 2010 09:00
I have exactly the same problem.
My mini also crashed when trying to install the likes of firefox and adobe flash
after calling support they made me run several tests which to no avail they eventually took back the computer and replaced the motherboard.
however i still cant create a back up and they have advised me to buy an external drive to install discs on.
has anyone else had this problem?
Steefos
1 Message
0
April 25th, 2011 14:00
I know this post is quite old now but did you find a solution to your problem?
I have a Inspiron 17R and have the exact problem where the 2 radio buttons are shaded and I cant click on either of them to create my Recovery media with a DVD in the drive or USB Flash drive connected.
I'm getting worried now if I ever need to restore factory settings I cant do it without buying another copy of Windows 7.
Thanks
IronMan10
2 Posts
0
April 25th, 2011 16:00
Dell never solved the problem, because it was unsolvable. Instead I did a workaround.
It couldn't be solved because I think the feature to create backup discs just doesn't work with WindowsXP (which my netbook had). If only Dell had acknowledged this early on, and had not provided misleading and unworkable user instructions, it would have save me a lot of wasted time and avoidable grief.
The only workaround (suggested by Dell) was to completely re-install the WindowsXP operating system from scratch (using an external USB DVD drive, as the netbook doesn't have a built-in DVD). This I did but the end result was that I didn't get it back to the original factory-install config, and I now have no Recovery Partition (as it can't be recreated from original OS media).
So although the individual people in the Dell support call centre tried to be helpful they did not have sufficient product knowledge about Dell factory configurations.
Regards.
magilla1
1 Message
0
May 30th, 2011 19:00
I have a dell inspiron mini 1012 notebook. I would like to know how to set the recovery back to factory settings, I tried a few times but i
just keep going in circle's .can you tell me step by step how to recover my dell to factory settings?