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- When your pc goes bad, and you basically need to rebuild it, when you restart, press CTRL+F11 at Dell logo. It will ask to restore pc to the way it was shipped to you. Very cool feature. I just have a couple of questions which were mentioned above. At work I deal with A LOT of dell pcs.
deolaudamus
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Posted February 19th, 2005 06:00
Is there any method available to repair that option after having performed an OS install from disc? I was going to give a go at my own install, but for lack of time to tweak drivers, etc, I want to go back to factory fresh. Never saw a warning that installing from disc would destroy the ability to restore from HDD...Anyone with an Inspiron XPS wanna make a backup of their MBR with a freeware utility and ship it my way?! I'd love it if ya did!- Hi all,My first post, and i hope that it helps someone out.I have an Inspiron 5160, whilst trying out various progs, and OS loaders, i must have over written my MBR.After POST, the little blue strip at top doesnt show, with dell.com, and i cant use CTRL F11 to restore my systemI have now fixed this little issue for myself.I used a little free tool from http://www.diydatarecovery.nl/mbrtool.htm , which allows you to make backups of the MBR either on a different sector of the disk, or onto floppy.It also allows you to edit the partition tables manually.You have to have access to another dell system upon which the CTRL F11 still works, in my case i have a little old Dimension 3000. I copied the mbr from the 3000 onto floppy.I also copied the mbr from the laptop onto a floppy too, and to the disk itself.I then restored the MBR from the Dimension 3000 to the Laptop... but as the disks are different sizes, i knew that the partition table would be incorrect. So all i then did was to manually edit the partition table, using the same values as i had already saved, when i saved the MBR that had the CTRL F11 missing.Rebooted system, dell.com appears and i can do CTRL F11, except for the fact that i had chnaged around the original partitions, so i cant actually restore ... YET!will keep you posted.Hope this helps.Here is an actual example of the MBR dump from my dimension 3000.
Dump MBR for disk 128 (0)
Date for MBR dump is 02-02-2005
000 FA B8 00 00 8E D0 BC 00 7C FB 8E D8 FC B9 80 00 ³ ú¸..ŽÐ¼.|ûŽØü¹€.
016 8B F4 BF 00 06 8E C0 F3 66 A5 EA 2F 06 00 00 10 ³ ‹ô¿..ŽÀóf¥ê/....
032 00 01 00 00 06 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 E8 ³ ...............è
048 C3 00 B4 11 CD 16 74 48 3D 00 89 75 43 B4 10 CD ³ Ã.´.Í.tH=.‰uC´.Í
064 16 33 DB C6 87 BE 07 00 80 BF C2 07 DB 74 0E 83 ³ .3ÛƇ¾..€¿Â.Ût.ƒ
080 C3 10 83 FB 40 72 EC BE 47 07 E9 90 00 C6 87 BE ³ Ã.ƒû@rì¾G.é.Ƈ¾
096 07 80 C6 87 C2 07 0C 2E C7 06 23 06 00 06 B8 43 ³ .€Æ‡Â...Ç.#...¸C
112 00 86 C4 B2 80 BE 1F 06 CD 13 72 DB 0A E4 75 D7 ³ .†Ä²€¾..Í.rÛ.äu×
128 33 DB 33 C9 8A 87 BE 07 3C 00 74 0C 3C 80 74 05 ³ 3Û3ÉŠ‡¾.<.t.<€t.
144 BE 8A 07 EB 58 41 8B EB 83 C3 10 83 FB 40 72 E4 ³ ¾Š.ëXA‹ëƒÃ.ƒû@rä
160 BE 95 07 00 0C 80 F9 01 75 43 BE 58 07 8B C5 C1 ³ ¾•...€ù.uC¾X.‹ÅÁ
176 E8 04 00 44 1B FF D7 66 8B 86 C6 07 66 2E A3 27 ³ è..D.ÿ×f‹†Æ.f.£'
192 06 2E C7 06 23 06 00 7C B4 42 B2 80 BE 1F 06 CD ³ ..Ç.#..|´B²€¾..Í
208 13 BE 80 07 72 17 0A E4 75 13 BE 78 07 FF D7 BE ³ .¾€.r..äu.¾x.ÿ×¾
224 AB 07 81 3E FE 7D 55 AA 75 03 E9 13 75 FF D7 B4 ³ «.>þ}Uªu.é.uÿ×´
240 00 CD 16 CD 18 B8 03 00 CD 10 B8 00 B8 8E C0 33 ³ .Í.Í.¸..Í.¸.¸ŽÀ3
256 FF B8 20 1F B9 50 00 F3 AB B1 0C BE 3B 07 BF 44 ³ ÿ¸ .¹P.ó«±.¾;.¿D
272 00 AC AB E2 FC B4 02 B7 00 BA 00 02 CD 10 B4 86 ³ .¬«âü´.·.º..Í.´†
288 B9 1E 00 BA 80 84 CD 15 BF 2C 07 C3 AC 3C 00 74 ³ ¹..º€„Í.¿,.ì<.t
304 09 B4 0E BB 07 00 CD 10 EB F2 C3 77 77 77 2E 64 ³ .´.»..Í.ëòÃwww.d
320 65 6C 6C 2E 63 6F 6D 43 61 6E 6E 6F 74 20 72 65 ³ ell.comCannot re
336 73 74 6F 72 65 0D 0A 00 4C 6F 61 64 69 6E 67 20 ³ store...Loading
352 50 42 52 20 66 6F 72 20 64 65 73 63 72 69 70 74 ³ PBR for descript
368 6F 72 20 31 2E 2E 2E 00 64 6F 6E 65 2E 0D 0A 00 ³ or 1....done....
384 66 61 69 6C 65 64 2E 0D 0A 00 42 61 64 20 66 6C ³ failed....Bad fl
400 61 67 0D 0A 00 30 20 61 63 74 69 76 65 20 70 61 ³ ag...0 active pa
416 72 74 69 74 69 6F 6E 73 0D 0A 00 42 61 64 20 50 ³ rtitions...Bad P
432 42 52 0D 0A 00 00 00 00 8C 73 F4 D0 00 00 00 01 ³ BR......ŒsôÐ....
448 01 00 DE FE 3F 06 3F 00 00 00 08 B7 01 00 80 00 ³ ..Þþ?.?....·..€.
464 01 07 07 FE FF FF 47 B7 01 00 AE 17 36 04 00 00 ³ ...þÿÿG·..®.6...
480 C1 FF DB FE FF FF F5 CE 37 04 89 06 70 00 00 00 ³ ÁÿÛþÿÿõÎ7.‰.p...
496 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 55 AA ³ ..............Uª
Geometry values (from BIOS!) for this disk : (C/H/S) - 1022/254/63
Partition Table Information
ACT TYPE START-C/H/S END----C/H/S LBA-start LBA-length
Entry 1: 0 DE 0 1 1 6 254 63 63 112392
Entry 2: 128 07 7 0 1 1023 254 63 112455 70653870
Entry 3: 0 DB 1023 0 1 1023 254 63 70766325 7341705
Entry 4: 0 00 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
Partition table as shown in MBR :
Entry 1: 00 01 01 00 DE FE 3F 06 3F 00 00 00 08 B7 01 00
Entry 2: 80 00 01 07 07 FE FF FF 47 B7 01 00 AE 17 36 04
Entry 3: 00 00 C1 FF DB FE FF FF F5 CE 37 04 89 06 70 00
Entry 4: 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00
ps. This is just my experience, please do not do anything that you dont understand, or cant backout of. As you may endup with an non bootable OS.!!
Message Edited by suneng on 02-28-2005 03:47 PM
deolaudamus
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Posted March 1st, 2005 03:00
For the record, there is another way to solve the problem, however it doesn't include restoring the ability to Ctrl+F11 to restore. In the end, I feel that makes it a slightly more secure method of being able to restore. Any Yayhoo can hit Ctrl+F11 and subsequently wipe your drive, this way requires a couple extra steps, and must therefore be a very intentional process. Granted that anybody who knows how to use fdisk or format or an OS install disk for that matter can still screw ya over...
Anyway, I don't have the link to the thread with me, but if you do a search for Ctrl+F11 you'll end up coming across a thread that has another fella's detailed experience getting back his factory-fresh state from the recovery partition. I was halfway there myself when I found it and that confirmed things for me. I have since then accomplished a recovery from the hidden partition and life is good.
Use a copy of Norton Ghost, 8.0 or using the legacy mode in 9.0, the hidden partition, if you haven't destroyed/deleted/formatted it, is still visible. Then all that is necassary is to restore the partition and you're back in business!
Hope that's some comfort...!
- There is enough info above to gelp someone out, or give a few pointers when things get sticky.My personal reason for keeping the CTRL F11 is so that when i change laptops, the new owner still has the default restore options.That aside, I have imaged the hidden partition and saved it to DVD now, and also made a slight modification, so that it will still restore even though my partitions are changed from original.Regards,AvEnglandGreat Britain
Gamer1983
24 Posts
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0
Posted January 25th, 2005 17:00
What???
What R U talking about.??