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Restoring Dell Inpsiron 537S to factory settings?
Hi I need to restore a Dell Inspiron 537s to it's factory settings.
Common wisdom is re-boot, use F8 to bring up advanced boot options, and use "Repair My Computer" option.
Problem: There is not such option in the menu.
We have no windows DVD to fall back to, lost in a move, and after an afternoon of searching and trying, there's zero joy on making system restore work from the RESTORE partition.
Assistance would be appreciated. The computer hardware works fine. There's just a ton of stuff on the computer that makes it (or should have made it) a much easier task to restore the system and start back at one.
RoHe
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10 Elder
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March 9th, 2014 17:00
Version of Windows?
If you're in the US or Canada, you can request the OS disk here. Dell may or may not provide it and they may or not charge you for it.
Keep in mind that if you restore Windows you lose everything on the hard drive so personal files must be backed up on external media first.
12322A
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March 9th, 2014 18:00
Thanks for the reply.
It's Windows Vista Home Premium SP2, 64-bit.
Tried the link out but this is what I got:
"Retail Tag detected. Please click here to proceed towards Registration"
Same thing, even after registering.
Other thoughts?
RoHe
10 Elder
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March 10th, 2014 11:00
If you purchased the system from a 3rd party vendor and not directly from Dell, you may need to contact that vendor for the OS disks.
It might take a day or three for your registration to go through, but Dell may still require you to contact the store where you purchased the PC.
Alternatively, look for an .iso file for this exact version of Windows on the Digtal River site. Download the .iso and the follow instructions to burn on a DVD. Use that to reinstall and use the Microsoft Product Key from the sticker on the PC to activate WIndows as part of the installation.
Philip_Yip
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March 11th, 2014 08:00
See here:
http://dellwindowsreinstallationguide.com/download-microsoft-windows-and-office/download-microsoft-windows/download-vista-sp1-iso/
See also Windows Reinstallation Guide/A Clean Install of Windows Vista:
http://dellwindowsreinstallationguide.com/
For product activation use the ABR program:
http://dellwindowsreinstallationguide.com/a-clean-install-of-windows-7/microsoft-product-activation/the-activation-backup-and-recovery-program-windows-7-version/