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Thread: Dell Laptop Recovery

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    Question Dell Laptop Recovery

    Mate of mine's given me his son's Dell Inspiron 1720 to fix, there's nothing mechanically wrong but the kid's managed to hose his Vista installation, probably through virus/malware.

    Now I know bugger all about Dells and laptops so I could do with a little advice here.

    I have the recovery disk so I booted from that and selected the repair option but it didn't work.

    So I booted with a Linux Mint CD and extracted 10Gb worth of I-Tunes music to one of my external hard disks, paving the way for a clean install of Vista.

    Which is where I'm at right now.

    I have booted from the recovery disk and selected a fresh Vista install. I'm presented with three options of where to install Vista.

    It's a 120Gb disk divided into three partitions:

    Partition 2: 10Gb: Recovery
    Partition 3: 99.1Gb OS
    Partition 4: 2.5Gb Mediadirect

    Obviously I install Vista to partition 3 but I'm wondering what the other two partitions are for?

    Can the recovery Partition be used to recover Vista with all previous settings, files and folders intact?

    If not what's the point of having it? In such a small HDD 10Gb is a lot of space.

    I was wondering whether it's worth booting from a Parted Magic CD and merging all the partitions into one. Or maybe merge into one then split HDD into 2 partitions for OS and I-Tunes music storage.

    Or is the way Dell have set this thing up vital or beneficial?

    My daughter was recently given an old Toshiba laptop with a similar setup and I wiped that HDD, made one partition and installed XP then activated XP ok with the serial number on the laptop case.

    I've looked on the Dell website but it seems woefully lacking in information about the partition setup and what it's for.

    Any advice/explanation from knowledgeable folk apreciated

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    Re: Dell Laptop Recovery

    The recovery partition will most likely allow you to restore the system to how dell shipped it by pressing one of a few keys when the system boots (usually F10). It's usually a custom program but sometimes lazy manufacturers just use the windows restore option.

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    Re: Dell Laptop Recovery

    Agreed. Certainly the case with newer laptops. They generally offer both a system recovery/fix mode and restore to their origional shipping condition from the recovery partition. but i also cant remember which of the higher f keys the Dells use to boot to their recovery manager.

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    Re: Dell Laptop Recovery

    Quote Originally Posted by joel_spencer View Post
    The recovery partition will most likely allow you to restore the system to how dell shipped it by pressing one of a few keys when the system boots (usually F10). It's usually a custom program but sometimes lazy manufacturers just use the windows restore option.
    I agree. I also think it's a bad idea because if the hard drive fails then that recovery partition is gone. I guess it's the easiest method to restore the computer back to it's "out of the box" state though.

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    Re: Dell Laptop Recovery

    Thanks for the replies.

    I have since discovered that F8 is the key that boots into recovery mode; the 10Gb partition holds a ghost image of the OS for recovery purposes and the MediaDirect partition is for playing movies music and viewing pictures without booting fully into the OS.

    I have tried every option and once got as far as the password but the cursor froze.

    The current state of the machine is that if I try to start Vista normally it freezes just before completion.

    Every single other option results in a constant reboot loop.

    I've spoken to me mate's son and he's happy losing the mediadirect function, says he never used it anyway, so I'm going to make the HDD one partition and do a fresh install.

    After installation I may make a partition to hold files and media.

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    Re: Dell Laptop Recovery

    Quote Originally Posted by 12GaugeShotty View Post
    I agree. I also think it's a bad idea because if the hard drive fails then that recovery partition is gone. I guess it's the easiest method to restore the computer back to it's "out of the box" state though.
    When booted into the OS the recovery manager allows you to back up the recovery partition to DVD (or in older cases CDs, lots of CD's) in case of HDD failure.

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    Re: Dell Laptop Recovery

    Today I made the hard disk into one partition using PartedMagic and formatted to NTFS.

    Installed Vista Home Premium from non-Dell disk successfully, downloaded drivers from Dell site and installed video driver first of all.

    On reboot the machine is going into an endless reboot loop again, the original fault.

    Prior to each reboot a BSOD flashes briefly.

    I'm beginning to suspect a hardware fault or some peculiar quirk of Dell systems I'm not familiar with.

    Going to run Memtest and some hard disk analysis.

    Frustrating.

    Now I know why I really don't like laptops or Dell.

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    Re: Dell Laptop Recovery

    If memtest doesn't reveal anything then check the harddrive next, figure out what make it is then download the relevant testing tools and burn them to a disc. You can either check the serial number in the bios and google it to tell the make or whip out the hard drive and look. Dell's usually secure the harddrive by two screws on the side but it could be under a panel underneath the laptop too.

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    Re: Dell Laptop Recovery

    Quote Originally Posted by joel_spencer View Post
    If memtest doesn't reveal anything then check the harddrive next, figure out what make it is then download the relevant testing tools and burn them to a disc. You can either check the serial number in the bios and google it to tell the make or whip out the hard drive and look. Dell's usually secure the harddrive by two screws on the side but it could be under a panel underneath the laptop too.
    Thanks for the reply.

    Since the above post I took the HDD out, it's a Toshiba SATA 120Gb. Put it back and carried out a few diagnostic tests after booting from the Ultimate Boot CD V4.0 which showed the disk to be ok. Ran Memtest for two hours, no errors shown.

    Booted from the Dell recovery disk and now have Vista loaded and stable, no rebooting problem.

    The partition still shows as one in Windows, 111Gb, and I'm having to load drivers manually. I thought the recovery disk put things back to how the machine was delivered? That is, with all partitions created and loaded and all drivers installed? Puzzling.

    At this moment I can't get online and can't activate Network Discovery within Vista. Which makes it odd that Vista shows as activated. I don't understand that, does that happen with all Dell recovery disks?

    The owner tells me the machine has wireless built in so I'm assuming I need to load a driver to make it work but I don't know which one. I've downloaded all of what look like contenders from the Dell site and have so far installed chipset, audio and graphics drivers.

    There are two drivers likely to be for the network/wireless but I'm not sure which one.

    Within Device Manager I have, under the title 'Other Devices' four components with an exclamation mark beside them, 3 x 'Base System Device' and 1 x 'Network Controller'. I would assume I need drivers for these to be able to connect to my wireless router.

    And that's the state of play atm, any advice/tips/pointers gratefully accepted.

    And the next person who brings a laptop to me to sort out I will politely tell them to go away

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    Re: Dell Laptop Recovery

    The wired network card was more than likely installed by vista, as for the wireless - if you've searched for drivers by service tag on dell's page (if not then this is usually the best way to search for them as within each model various different sound, network, video cards will be used) then just install the relevant wireless driver.
    If you need pointers as to which one it is then (because the service tag is missing or whatever) then sometimes there's information written on the bottom of the laptop for legal purposes (health and safety reasons I think. Failing that if you go into the device properties and copy the hardware id into google then deduce from that which driver it is from dell's page, finally you could open the back of the laptop and see if the laptop has any information on the wireless card itself.
    Other drivers could be for a webcam, bluetooth, modem, card reader or mobile broadband modem, I couldn't say without the service tag or the hardware ids.

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    Re: Dell Laptop Recovery

    Quote Originally Posted by floppybootstomp View Post
    Thanks for the reply.

    I thought the recovery disk put things back to how the machine was delivered? That is, with all partitions created and loaded and all drivers installed? Puzzling.

    At this moment I can't get online and can't activate Network Discovery within Vista. Which makes it odd that Vista shows as activated. I don't understand that, does that happen with all Dell recovery disks?
    The Dell recovery disk is just a windows installation disk, nothing special apart from a couple of DEll specific files to make sure Dell logo's appear. There should have also been a disk which contained all the drivers you needed but I'm guessing you don't have this.

    Dell's auto activate due to a thing called SLIC - some data in the BIOS that confirms you are installing on a Dell so there is no need to manually activate windows.
    Go here http://support.euro.dell.com/support...NS_PNT_PM_1720 to get the drivers.

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    Re: Dell Laptop Recovery

    Thanks for replies youse two.

    No, I don't have the disk with the drivers but I entered the Service tag B41CT3J which took me to Here

    From there I have downloaded:

    Audio R17186.exe which I have installed (I added the word 'Audio' for identification) Vista did activate sound by itself but I thought best to install dedicated drivers.

    Dell Multi Device A17 R174292.exe which I have installed and is the driver for an Nvidia 8600 video device.

    Intel Mobile chipset R153997.exe which I have installed and this install looked to go ok. I would have imagined this would have included drivers for the wireless NIC but I guess not.

    Notebook software R143625.exe which I have installed.

    There is a webcam in the machine.

    It also looks likely that if I hard-wired the machine via it's ethernet port to my router I could get online/join my network.

    I have also downloaded these drivers and have added words to most to identify them but am unsure which ones to install:

    Chipset R141246.exe
    Dell video A17 R174292.exe
    Network A01 R150593.exe
    Network A02 R149798.exe

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    Re: Dell Laptop Recovery

    You'll need the wireless driver, it'll probably be the 1395 card that is fitted but it's a whopping 53Mb download but it looks like it is the R174292 file which you say is the video - are you sure that's the video file you downloaded as it's showing as R190091?

    Install teh chipset driver and then let Vista update it through windows update.
    You couldn't post a screenshot of the device manager could you?

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    Re: Dell Laptop Recovery

    Some success

    killie99 you were correct the R174292 file was the wireless LAN driver. Installed it and connected instantly to my wireless router.

    The thing that confused me was a mistake I made, I had labelled that driver 'Video' which it wasn't. That was why I was puzzled when I opened the other file and saw the video driver being installed.

    Which makes me, for one day only - an imbecile

    Here's a shot of the device manager at present moment:



    I'm currently downloading all 77 of the Vista updates and I note that amongst them is a driver for the inbuilt Creative webcam so hopefully that will take care of one device but I'm wondering what the others are.

    Again, to everybody who replied and helped - Thank You.

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    Re: Dell Laptop Recovery

    Seems I spoke too soon.

    At the end of the Windows update an error screen appeared saying one update did not install correctly.

    I rebooted the machine as instructed and it won't boot into Vista now, just goes into a reboot loop again.

    At the first reboot a BSOD flashed up briefly and I managed to glance that a hive entry in the registry had failed, or something similar to that.

    So we got to start this thing all over again.

    Oh, I love Dells, I really do...

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    Re: Dell Laptop Recovery

    There is an app on the Dell download site for the camera, it's under "Apps" and is called 'Dell Webcam manager", you should download and install it.
    The Dell driver for the webcam is under "input device drivers"
    I would have expected the 'base system device" items to have been found correctly if you installed the intel chipset driver, have you done this? Or it may be being caused by an old dial up modem that is fitted but not installed correctly as I see there are V92 modem drivers listed in the comms section.

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