Dell System Recovery Guide

I called Dell Canada today;

I was told clearly that my XPS 17 that is currently being shipped will come with some disks that include the OS Backup and also the Resource DVD.
I then asked if I will be able to do a "Clean" install of the OS without the other bundled software and he told me that all I would need to do is NOT chose the Factory restore option.

Can someone that has their newer computer please confirm if this is indeed true?

Thanks

 

If it comes with a Resource DVD and the OS DVD, then you should be all set to do a clean install when the computer arrives.

 

I tried to do a clean install to like new when I first got it from Dell with no luck. Very hard and confusing. I got the installation DVD,Drivers and Utilities and 2 software DVD's that I paid for extra.
After I installed Win7 I used the drivers cd and couldn't find the drivers for about 6 devices or so. No software for Office starter anyware.
There might be a way to do it but I couldn't get it. Also there isn't a choice in advanced boot options either for a restore stored on the drive that I can find. Dell wants $140 to do this. I wish I had the money laying around I'm curious as how they would do this.
There is a Dell recovery DVD maker and I'm curious as if this makes one DVD that in the future you can have a complete restore without haveing to load drivers,office,etc.
I did have a image I had saved and used to pick up the pieces and get going again.

 

You can use the Dell Recovery DVD maker to make DVD images....dunno if it'll work now though.

You can use the two disks they gave you to install. What drivers are missing, I might be able to help you find them.

 

Can you access the recovery partition if you have deleted with orignal OS partition.

On my Asus G73, I upgraded to an SSD, and moved the original HDD to a storage HD. I formatted the windows partition but kept the recovery partition. Later when I wanted to sell the laptop, I removed the SSD, rebooted, hit F8, entered the recovery partition, and restored from there.

My Alienware isn't letting me do that. My recovery partition is intact, but I cannot get it to active, does anyone know how?

UPDATE: Called Alienware Tech support, they remote fixed my recovery partition. Strong work alienware!

 

I have a Latitude E6420 with a bad HDD, I have decided to get a SSD and now want to restore the pc to factory condition include recovery & diagnosic partition if possible..
I have contacted Dell but the media they send me is the Win7 Reinstall & Resource DVD..
I don't really want to do a clean install..Is it possible to request Dell PC Restore Recovery Media?

 

If you didn't make the recovery discs when it was brand new and working, there is no way to get back the recovery partition.

The only feasible way would be to find someone with the exact same configuration and hoping they created the recovery discs, for you to borrow them to use.

 

I owe a Dell All in One 2310 (not a notebook/netbook...)
The fact is I want the original CDs/DVDs so I can make two partitions, one the OS and another the data.
Dell DataSafe isn't the best solution...

 

It's not the best solution I agree, but unless one orders the separate os and driver disks while building the system, that's the best option out there for the majority of users.

 

It's not for my needs.
I have to format the system since some applications doesn't work well, even after recovery with Data Safe.
However, I want two partitions, one for the OS and one for all my movies.

 

@ booboo12


hi,

yesterday my dell laptop turned off suddenly , I dont know what happened, whe I tried to restart it, I just see a blinking cursor screen, I dont get anything else after that.

I called dell today morning they said my OS got crashed during some update, I dont have any recovery discs, so Dell is sending a recovery discs, I will get that in couple of days.

I dont have a backup of my data, can you please suggest me a method to make a recovery installation with out loosing any of my data? Please help me....

 

The easiest way would be to make a live CD/USB stick of Ubuntu on another machine.

Boot from that and use an external hard drive to save your documents and stuff from your messed up windoes install to.

Good luck. Post back if you have questions!

 

Booboo12 cheers for the Excellent Guide, allowed me to work out most of what the rebuild process is and get a better understanding of what my question is….!

I have an XPSL501 which is about due for a rebuild, & I was planning to use the Dell OS DVD to rebuild the Primary Partition, however I have the added bonus of having picked up two Trojans (the problem with my GF expecting mail from unknown people)

So as I now feel violated I am weighing up my options;
What is the likelihood that the Dell Restore partition and recovery partitions will have become infected?
If they aren’t infected then I will just delete the main partition,
If they are then I intend to reformat the whole drive, will the Dell Disc allow me to do this, or do I need to use a Win7 Pro DVD I am able to borrow, (only for the tools to reformat the drive) if I go this route will I then be able to rebuild from the Dell OS DVD?
if so what functions will I loose out on?

 

It's pretty unlikely that the Dell Recovery partition was affected. You can use the Dell OS Disc to wipe and partition the entire drive if desired, just like you would from a standard Windows disc.

 

Booboo12

Thanks for that, I'll give the recovery partition a go, & check if my online banking is redirected to a scam site again....!

Sorry for the delay in replying, the NAS with all my backup data decided to have a fan failure after a powercut, so being fixing that.....!

cheers

 

No problem! Ouch, hope you get that sorted!

 

Hello,

I recently reinstalled OS on my Dell XPS Studio laptop. I have Dell provided resources and Windows Vista Home Edition CDs. I formatted C: and reinstalled OS after that drivers from resources CD. Everything seems fine.

* Question 1 - I did not touch recovery partition D:. But, now I don't see 'Repair Your Computer' option which allows to do factory restore. Dell website has a note: 'By performing a Manual Reinstall, you will no longer be able to do a PC Restore or Restore to Factory Settings.' So, I guess as I did manual reinstall, this option is no longer available. Is it true? Even though Dell website clearly says so, my googling says people can still do factory restore. So, I am confused what is correct?

* Question 2 - What is the use of recovery partition other than doing factory setting restore? If after doing manual reinstall, I can no longer use it, i.e recovery partition is of no use to me, I would like to format the drive and free up the space. I get that in future if I need to restore my machine, I will have to do manual reinstall again. Correct me if I am wrong.

* Question 3 - When I go to Computer Management > Disk Management on my newly formatted laptop, I see 3 partitions - C: OS, D: Recovery. But, the first partition listed has no drive letter assigned to it. Its size is just 39 MB. Status stays Healthy EISA configuration. What is it? I don't know if I had it before, because I had never checked before. On another laptop of mine the similar partition takes 10 GB. So, I am curious seeing the difference.

Thanks.

 

1. Once you do a manual install without touching the partition, it's likely that the Windows "Repair Your Computer" tools can't "see" the partition. I'm not quite sure how to fix this as I haven't really looked into it.

2. Sure you can format and reuse the recovery partition. Just use your favorite partition manager (I like gParted) to do it.

3. You likely still have the Dell diagnostics partition as your third partition.

 

Hello forum,

I tried to create a new installation of Windows 8 evaluation edition on my Studio XPS 1645 laptop. Did not quite like it as it is very different from the usual Windows 7 Professional edition that I am so used to, with the missing start menu button and stuff. Used it for a few days, but was still uncomfortable with it.

That's when I decided to revert to my original Windows 7 factory image. But, the dell restore shortcut Ctrl+F11 is broken now, apparently by the clean Windows 8 installation I did earlier! Did some research and found out that Dell uses a custom MBR to recognize the shortcut Ctrl+F11 to launch Dell System Restore. This custom MBR is overwritten by any clean OS installation! After some trouble, I was able to use DOS to gain access to the recovery partition and use IMAGEX to restore factory image back.

But, as it turns out, I have lost the original Dell MBR. Tried using fixes as per Goodell's website, but the DSRFIX tool also fails to work. In this regard, can someone help me by providing a copy of the Dell MBR?

This requires a tool "MBRSAVER", which is a part of DSRFIX.zip and can be downloaded from link. Steps as per Goodells website to get the same:
1) Begin with your computer with a known working Dell MBR. (If your computer briefly displays the blue "www.dell.com" bar at the top of the screen during bootup, it has a working Dell MBR
2) Boot the source computer from a DOS boot disk and run the command "mbrsaver /s a:\dellmbr.bin" to save the MBR sector.

This "dellmbr.bin" is the file that may possibly help me to restore the dell MBR and get it back to its original factory configuration.

Any help in this regard will be really appreciated. Thanks!


Important: Anyone planning to upgrade and replace original Dell factory-shipped Operating System, please backup the recovery partitions and DELL MBR using Mbrsaver utility as the new OS could disturb the Dell MBR information!

Note: I posted this in the Studio XPS 1645 thread earlier, but this seems to be more relevant thread. Apologies for re-posting/spamming.

 

I need a Computer brainiacs help with my problem. I recently bought a used Latitude XT2 laptop, and the blasted thing after owning it less then 40 days and less then 24 hours operating time started flashing blue lights on the F4,F5, and the Cap lock buttons. Then after 2 minutes the fan shuts off without booting and the flashing lights turn solid after 20/30 minutes. The biggest issue I have is I cannot access the Service Tag number. The seller removed the Sticker and I cannot boot to Bios (F2) in order to recover it. Dell company refuses to advise me on this without the service tag number. Please help me save my laptop. I have tried all the hints tricks of all the F buttons nothing works. It was originaly bought with windows Vista and the seller installed Windows 7 Professional. I dont know how to repair or if I can repair this laptop. It was suggested I install a new motherboard. If so which one is the best for this laptop?

 

I'd suggest posting in the latitude subforum for this issue.

Sent from my XT862 using Tapatalk 2

 

Hello
I'm not sure if you will see this as it's very old, but I will give it a go.
I got a virus on my dell studio 15. I want to do a clean install, but when I follow these steps, when I select partition 3, the primary, a message box appears saying that it will keep the old windows in a folder called Windows.old. Ideally I don't want any old software left on my computer, have you any idea what I can do about this? I am not that savvy on this kind of stuff btw!
thanks very much
Adam

 

Hello again
I've just seen that there is an option to format (I think I clicked onto advanced). Might this be the way forward?
thanks
Adam

 

Proceed with the restore. When Windows is up and running again, browse to the windows.old folder using Windows Explorer, check it for any files you forgot to backup, then delete it.

Sent from my DROID3 using Tapatalk 2

 

Hey Richard

thanks v much for responding, much appreciated. I didnt get chance to do a back up, as I really didnt know how to deal with the virus, so am gonna have to rely on the one I did couple months back on my spare HD. I'm wary of going into the windows.old folder, as might the virus still be in some files there? This is probably a really dumb question so apologies, but I just want to make sure I don't get it back like that? Is there any way of knowing? I use the mcafee from my internet provider, yet still got the virus(it called itself a trojan) which is rather disappointing.
thanks again
Adam

 

Yup. Dell isn't doing discs anymore, at least standard. I'm glad they'll ship a DVD for free, hopefully it'll be like it was years ago when this guide was written: just plain vanilla windows and a separate drivers DVD.

Sent from my Nexus 5 using Tapatalk

 

Great information for Dell system recovery, this is very useful information sheared .

 

OK, so apparently Dell has gone down a different road now for Windows 10. I'm getting an Inspiron 13 next week, but I'm switching out the HDD for an SSD I have. Completely to my surprise, Dell now hosts a "Dell customized version of Windows 10" that includes:

• Updated patches that address common issues for Dell systems.
  
• Dell support information.

So, now I'm in a dilemma. Install Microsoft's vanilla Windows 10 image or use this customized image. The Dell doesn't include bloatware, as far as I can tell, but I'm curious what these "updated patches" are. Are these, then, not just the typical Windows updates?

And, do we know....does restoring the image align SSDs? I've always heard that it's better to actually let Windows install itself properly because during the formatting process, it aligns the SSD.

EDIT:

Err, we can just check, actually. Has anyone used the custom Dell Windows 10 image on an SSD? Did it align the 4KB pages properly? You can check by doing this:

 

Dude, thanks for updating this for Windows 10. It's been ages since Thomas and I have been in the thread to update for even Windows 8.

Interesting that they're just hosting a image that you can download....

 

Sure, no worries. I just checked: all the partitions are properly aligned with 4096 bytes / 4KB, so you will get the full SSD performance! It's an image, but not an "installed" image. It's just like the Microsoft image, which was a good surprise: it runs you through the Win10 installation procedure instead of just dumping you onto a desktop with no way to configure partitions if you had wanted to.

Yeah, I was surprised, too. But, it does run a few checks whether it's being installed on a Dell system: first, the service tag to even access the page and that service tag must show a Dell product that was sold with Windows 10. Then, the actual file is downloaded through a service and not through the traditional browser download. Then, when you first boot from the USB drive, it goes through a Dell update procedure.

And, maybe this is specific to my laptop, but it actually resets your BIOS, too! I had upgraded before the image, but after the image, I had been downgraded back! It turns out the recovery image has a "BIOS backup" option that is triggered to restore.

Bloatware was non-existent. You get nothing, which is great for "building up" your program lists instead of trying to tear down whatever Dell has inserted all over.

 

Thanks for all shared a grateful information about how to recover dell system. open this url " http://dell.to/1Xjgcuw" this is dell official website, here full information about Dell backup and recovery.

 

Thanks, there seems to be a lot of useful information on your website!

 

Do you have any guide for fresh installation of windows in Dell without losing some preinstalled apps that came initially (like waves audio , fingerprint etc..)

 

It is one of the best guidelines I have ever seen... Thanks a lot for sharing. Dell is having some great laptops and notebooks I must say.

 

Amazing guide, thanks