Dell factory reset

ArthurG

Have searched but can't seem to find an answer...

Does anyone know how you go about doing a factory reset on a Dell Dimension desktop?. I'm talking about using that hidden partition to get everything back to the way it was when you got the machine - as opposed to just reinstalling Windows.

I don't have any sort of restore CD (do have Windows XP).

Sent an email to their technical support, and got a confused, poorly written response telling me to ring some number in the UK....??

Any help much appreciated!!.

Thanks.

Gurgle

ArthurG wrote:

I'm talking about using that hidden partition to get everything back to the way it was when you got the machine - as opposed to just reinstalling Windows.

hidden partition ?

Somebodys been telling porkies!

Mac daddy

Gurgle wrote:

hidden partition ?

Somebodys been telling porkies!

Normally dell machine's have a 2 Gig partion on them,
Diagnostics tools are on it.

Not sure if it can't be used to reinstall your Os, that's what you have the cd's for.

Sparky

some dells have a hidden partition and contains a symantec image software to restore your factory image to your hdd
AFAIK you can get into it by pressing i think ctrl and f12 when the blue bar with www.dell.com appears at startup.

Wandering Dazed

Older dells used to use a utility called zztop to reimage them. Newer ones do not use this so you will need to use the system restore cd. There is a hidden partition of around 30 meg which contains diagnostic utilities that is accessed by pressing f10/f12 on startup.

maidhc

My Inspiron had about a 2Gb partition. You access it as Sparky_S said. There was no such thing on any other Dell computer I bought, but it might be a new thing.

There is also an image of the XP disc on the hard drive and all the relevant drivers are in a folder called "Drivers". ...all except the Synaptics driver which is buried somewhere else.

Anyhow, to make a long story short, the recovery partition along with all the other dell junk is gone and the laptop feels the better for it.

Sparky

the image file is a .gho file and i done the hard task of getting this off the hidden partition mainly because of me fcking up the MBR due to dual booting linux, the .gho file is installable by using norton ghost which is basically the program on the partition but made specially for dell.
new dells have 3 partitions

1. diagnostics partition (fat32 hidden)~30mb
2. backup partition (fat32 hidden)~3gb
3. main OS partition~ whatever size your hdd is.

thats why when you say get a 40bg hdd from dell there is always around 3-5gb missing, this is for the hidden partitions.
Its one of dells ways of antipiracy.

CyberGhost

I don't know how about you guys, but I always go a clean install/reformat-repartition of the drive with a new system.

Dell includes lots of junk with their package

but I didn't know that you could re-install your OS from a hard drive, btw, is it a fresh-reinstall or restoring an image that dell sent you?(with all the advertising crap)

is it possible to do it with some other computer or dell again? I have an old dell laptop that I use to test junk on, so I reinstall win, many times, how to do it? if it's possible? create a new partition(ntfs or fat?), copy xp cd on to it, then what? how to I make it boot? and do a clean install?

Sparky

its an image of the HDD with the software like when you first powered on your dell when you took it out of the box.


i as an experiment, I installed the image from my inspirion 9100 on my desktop pc to see what happens, first thing that happenes it boots up to windows but wont let you get into windows untill you activate it, probably because windows has reconised a huge hardware change and you have to re activate it. so its possible to use the image on another computer but alot of hardware changes will happen so alot of drivers will become redundant and new drivers will have to be installed for the new equipment.

id say if you tried to install the image on another dell it may work without reactivation but windows will know about a major hardware change so id say it will ask for reactivation.

CyberGhost

k but, how do I create that image?

this is what I want:

to have it on my laptop(I'll give it a cd size partition) and when I reformat my C drive, to install from that partition, without the need for a CD, but how do I make computer boot up from the "windows installation" partition? how do I do that?

Sparky

well what you could do is if ive read your question properly

to create an image of your hdd now
youd need an image software like norton ghost or nero image drive
that will create an image of your hdd, just the space the files take up so it could be 4gb say, youd be better off burning the image onto a dvd, then when you want to install it on your laptop run probably norton ghost and install the image from the dvd to the hdd.

but the problem that poses here is that if you just want to store the image on the partition you will have to connect the hdd to another pc and store the image on say the e:/ part of the drive for use.

its a tricky suitation but do-able id personally use norton ghost.