Dell Dimension E520 - Vista Home Basic - Factory PC Restore Image corrupted

angelnas

Hi everyone.

I had decided after a couple of weeks that i wanted to resit it to the factory restore setting as when I had purchased it.

I forgot that this facilty was available under the recovery drive. So went ahead and installed the vista operating system albeit incorrectly and this has corrupted the factory pc restore, i just get an error when i try to do this manuvoure.

I really want to know if I can get an image of this so I can reset my computer to its original dell factory configuration and have a similar request on the dell forum.

I have looked up the various support on how to retrive the dell factory but none of that will work if the factory restore image has been compromised.

Any help and assistance would be greatly appreciated.

Would dell provide a backup image of my system or something similar. I have a one year warrenty so would i be covered?

Or a way i can copy someone esles system details??

Many thanks.

banger9365

if you have drivers for your hardware lend a vista disc off a friend and us the legal/original code on the back off your pc to install it (do not us any one else’s code that is illegal ), which is perfectly fine and legal to do.or see if you can buy/get a restore disk of dell

angelnas

i ahve the vista disk which was shipped with dell and all the drives and ultilities. I just want the machine to be reconfigured to the way it was as dell had sent it. There are 2 drives.... the c drive where all the programs are held etc and the d drive this is the recovery drive. This is where part of the vista software got downloaded by mistake and this corrupted the image restore. This drive shuold not have been touched. Will dell give me an image copy of this?

motorguy

angelnas wrote: »

i ahve the vista disk which was shipped with dell and all the drives and ultilities. I just want the machine to be reconfigured to the way it was as dell had sent it. There are 2 drives.... the c drive where all the programs are held etc and the d drive this is the recovery drive. This is where part of the vista software got downloaded by mistake and this corrupted the image restore. This drive shuold not have been touched. Will dell give me an image copy of this?

I very much doubt it.

a full reinstall and the new drivers will get rid of all the dross that dell put on as standard anyway.

angelnas

Thanks anyway. I havent got round to putting on all the drives and utilities yet so ill do that.

superscaper

angelnas wrote: »

Thanks anyway. I havent got round to putting on all the drives and utilities yet so ill do that.

A fresh install is probably much better than Dell's configuration. Also if you really wanted the recovery data I suspect you'd only be able to get that by asking Dell, either in the form of a cd or recreating it on your d partition which may require you to return the pc.

rich_jtg

When you say the restore partition doesn't work, do you mean it won't activate when pressing the key combination at boot up, or does it start and then fail?

I had a similar problem recently after adding and removing partitions to a Dell machine so I could install Ubuntu.

I found this website very useful, and used the dsrfix utility to repair to fix the restore function.

angelnas

rich_jtg wrote: »

When you say the restore partition doesn't work, do you mean it won't activate when pressing the key combination at boot up, or does it start and then fail?

I had a similar problem recently after adding and removing partitions to a Dell machine so I could install Ubuntu.

I found this website very useful, and used the dsrfix utility to repair to fix the restore function.

Yeah i had checked this site buts it not for vista........not much information for vista users. F11 is the classic restore setup but for xp. On vista F11 does not register. ill be giving Dell a ring and see if they can do anything even remotely.

PaulK_3

If F11 isn't responding then there is the chance that during the install of Vista you have formatted the drive totally and removed the partition, either that or you have stuffed up the bootloader with the installation. Dell will most likely not be able to do anything remotely to help but you may be able to have a restore CD sent out but it will probably cost you.

angelnas

Hi everyone

Thanks to all those who responded. A forum member on the dell forum support managed to help me out. This link provided got my system back to factory settings. So it may help others in a similar predictament.
http://support.dell.com/support/topics/global.aspx/support/dsn/en/document?c=us&cs=19&dl=false&l=en&s=dhs&docid=298A2E89689E13C2E040A68F5B280AA4&doclang=EN