Dell Recovery Partition Woes

bonafide

bonafide

Member
I just got my new dell PC in today. It shipped with Windows 7 home. I put Win 7 professional on thinking that as long as i leave the recovery partition intact that I could perform a factory restore at any time.

Wrong, appearently I messed up the MBR. I've read several articles on how to restore the F8 factory image option. Nothing has worked for me. When I try the repair option and go to command prompt i cannot access any tools folder or *.wim file. Only a directory marked recovery. In windows I can view my recovery partition, it is a 20GB partition with 10GB used. I cannot see any files though.

Anyone know of a no nonsense way that I can utilize my recovery partition. I don't wish to recover now, i just would like the option in future. I finally gave up and decided to format the 20GB partition and copy my own disk image. Windows won't even let me format the partition. HELP! Thanks.

Jeremy
 
claptonman said:
You can legally download the .iso for windows 7 here:

http://www.w7forums.com/windows-7-iso-official-direct-download-links-t2910.html

Just burn the one you have to a DVD-r and boot to it. Just be sure to write down your CD key somewhere else because they can fade away on the outside of the computer.
Click to expand...

The PC is working great with my current install. Basicly I have an unusable recovery partition that I can't restore an image off of because I changed the Dell factory MBR. I would like to restore the ability to restore the factory hard drive image. Barring that I'd at least like to be able to format the partiton (because the factory image is still there, just no accessable at the moment) and burn a new, current HD image to it. Probally a job for a third party partitioning software, as Windows disk management doesn't want to touch it.

To be clear, I don't want to restore my PC right now. I just want to recover the option to restore it from the factory image. It is possible, but all the things I've read have been confusing and nothing I've tried so far has worked.
 
So just to clarify you can't press F8 on boot, choose Repair Your Computer, then at the main repair screen choose Dell restore at the bottom?

Did you check using the disc and then recover with a previous system image?
 
voyagerfan99 said:
So just to clarify you can't press F8 on boot, choose Repair Your Computer, then at the main repair screen choose Dell restore at the bottom?

Did you check using the disc and then recover with a previous system image?
Click to expand...

If he can't do this, here's what I would recommend:

Format the entire drive (click delete on both partitions), then new on the unallocated space you just made. Select your size (I would recommend leaving a 10GB partition or so for recovering the O/S) click apply, and windows will automatically create a 100MB boot recovery partition where you will install windows (you will be able to boot from this if you hit F8 during startup)

As for the other 10GB partition you created, you can use that to back up your other stuff, though I'd recommend an external drive for that.
 
voyagerfan99 said:
So just to clarify you can't press F8 on boot, choose Repair Your Computer, then at the main repair screen choose Dell restore at the bottom?

Did you check using the disc and then recover with a previous system image?
Click to expand...

Yes this is true. I believe it is because I changed to factory set master boot record. I can F8 boot but there is no option restore to factory image. No image is found at all. It is there but inaccessable due to the nature of the original setup and that original MBR. I have read of people being able to recover their image and restore from it. I don't want to restore from it, i'd just like to get that option back in F8 boot for future use.

The suggestion from the other chap is starting to sound like the way to go. Thanks to all!
 
bonafide said:
Yes this is true. I believe it is because I changed to factory set master boot record. I can F8 boot but there is no option restore to factory image. No image is found at all. It is there but inaccessable due to the nature of the original setup and that original MBR. I have read of people being able to recover their image and restore from it. I don't want to restore from it, i'd just like to get that option back in F8 boot for future use.

The suggestion from the other chap is starting to sound like the way to go. Thanks to all!
Click to expand...

You have one of two options: find a method that works and just wait until you need to restore to use it, or just delete it.
 
voyagerfan99 said:
You have one of two options: find a method that works and just wait until you need to restore to use it, or just delete it.
Click to expand...

I think you are right, I won't be truely serious about restoring it until i need to. That will provide sufficient motivation to actually figure out how to do it. Thanks yall.
 
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