Accessing Recovery partion?

Is it possible to access the recovery partition? If so, How would I go about doing it?

 

do you meen the recovery HD partion that's in models like the M1710?

 

Yeah, I have a E1505 and I am wanting to access the Dell Recovery partition on my hard drive. The partition that reinstalls everything back to factory shipped configuration.

 

Yes. It is possible. You need to modify the partition table though. It is pretty advanced stuff and is risky if you want to do it in windows. If you are intending to replace the Norton Ghost images that is used to restore the system then make sure you use Ghost 8 to create your image.

There is an article on how to do this on the net. Just do a google search.

Inside the Dell PC Restore Partition
http://www.goodells.net/dellrestore/

Likewise you don't want to go mucking around in there too much.

 

Are you trying to restore your factory image?

 

Whoops. If I mis-understood the OP (late night for me) then you can start the Recovery process by pressing Ctrl+F11 right when you see the www.dell.com part at the top of your screen during the bootup. This tells the DSR to run the recovery partition. You will see messages on your screen like one dealing with DSRcheck if it accepted the keystroke.

 

I just need to access the files in the recovery partition so i can copy one of the files i accedently deleted and put it back.

 

Anyone with a simple solution? Step by step on how? I'm a Tech oriented type of guy i can figure it out if someone could just give me a kick in the right direction.LOL

 

It isn't quite that simple. The recovery partition works by writing back to your hard drive a ghost image of the XP install that originally came with your laptop including what drivers were originally loaded. It isn't just a bunch of files that it copies over. If you don't mind editing the partition table then you can access it but you still need Norton Ghost to "explore" the ghost image so you can get what file it was that you needed. You also need to remember to revert the partition table changes so as to not prevent its use in the future.

NOTICE: I take no responsibility for the following information. You do this at your own risk!!!

For the record you can use PTEDIT.EXE to change the partition type of the third (or fourth) entry from DB to 0C in order to gain access to the partition. Once that is done windows will assign it a drive leter. Remember to revert the change so that it shows as type DB.

DB is a special partition type that Dell uses for their recovery partition. 0C is the type code for FAT32 Extended which Windows will recognize. Oh you will also see partition type DE on the list. That is your Dell Diagnostics partition.

 

Thanks for the info.