Accessing Recovery OEM Factory Image after Manual Install

Hi Alienware,

I am having a serious issue and after googleing all day long I could not find the answer.

I did a manual install of a Windows 7 copy which I had to uninstall.

Surprisingly, after doing the repair option pressing F8 on startup, the Alien Respawn Factory OEM image option is now gone.

I read some guys telling it is not possible to access it ever again, is that true?

I checked the partition and it is 100% ok, just as the factory image inside it. They have not been deleted and are ready to go, but for some reason that option is no longer available.

Please guide me to a solution. I need to use the factory image for the cleanest recovery, even if it requires third-part software.

Thanks !

 

Ok -you'll need access to another PC but this is how you do it:
1. Download the Windows 7 AIK from microsoft and install it on the other pc
2. Remove the hard drive from your alienware
3. Plug hard drive to another PC
4. Open a command prompt window
5. Diskpart
6. List disk
7. Select disk # (where # is the number corresponding to your alienwares hard drive)
8. List partition
9. Select partition # (where # is the partition number of the recovery partition)
10. assign
11. exit
12. Go into my computer and format the OS partition from your alienware Settings = NTFS Quick
13. Open up the deployment tools command prompt from the start menu
14. type the following command "imagex /apply H:\preload\base.wim 1 J:" (This assumes your recovery partition has drive letter H: and the OS partition is J: - adjust as neccesary)

Should take around 10 minutes - once it is done you can then plug the hard drive back into your alienware and you should boot up to a fresh factory install.

If you have trouble with it not being able to find h:\preload\base.wim then use H:\dell\image\factory.wim instead.

Remember to press the return key after each command i have given above.

 

Simmon,

I know I must sound stupid, but I can't do those steps... I don't have another computer to do it nor I have what it takes to remove the SSD safely and plug in another computer... I've been using PC's for 2 decades, but that a lot for me I think...

I wonder if there is na easier step... I mean, the image itself is intact, isn't there a software that could just copy that factory image for a flash drive and I could restore it on bios startup??

Thanks a lot man

 

I've just located the base.wim and factory.wim using Acronis... when I used the program start up restore, it gave me the options to check the recovery partition and browse through it, but it doesn't give me the option to restore the OS using those files...

My question still remains. Knowing that the partition is there, still intact, and the recovery images, can't I use some software to burn these images into a DVD or flash drive and use it as a bootable OS fresh install?

Also, I noticed that the preload directory has base.wim, base1.wim and base2.wim. When I bought the alienware, it was through PowerNotebooks and I think that they bought the laptop with one configuration and swaped components after its arrival, thus making more recovery images... am I right?

Can you help me?