Dell Inspiron 1420 Vista Factory Restore Failure

[batmeat]

So my father-in-law doesn't know much about computers and gave his laptop for me to fix. It's running Vista Home Premium (shudder). The thing has some serious problems. Rather then try to fix them all, he asked me to simply get it back to normal then sell it for him. The problem is that the dell recovery partition can't be accessed to restore it to factory settings. It won't boot to the partition using Ctrl F11, manually starting the the restore procedure by browsing to the partition -->Tools-->PCRestore.exe just fails saying access to \Tools\dp.sc was denied. There is no such file. Booting up and holding F8 lets me have the option to Repair My Computer, but that brings me to the account screen where I pick an account and type in a password. However, the only account I can choose is labled 'Other'. So you select it, it gives you the option to put in a username and password. No combination of users or passwords works. I used my NTFS password reset cd and reset the administrator password but still can't log in to this 'Other' account. The image file is called Factory.wim Is there some other way I can restore this thing to factory settings? It never came with a Vista dvd, it was all pre-loaded.

[batmeat]

Gonna try a simple NTFS boot disk to access the partition that way. I doubt it will work though. Also, I failed to mention that the Dell tools programs are worthless. Nothing in there leads to a restore to factory setting option.

Failed to mention that the Vista Repair Disk I made doesn't work.

[batmeat]

well, didn't work.....sigh

[hoemee]

can you type "Administrator" in place of "other" ?

[batmeat]

Nope. You click on 'Other' and then it allows you to put in a name and password. except no username or password combination works.

[batmeat]

Well, this sucked but here's what I did:
Downloaded and tried to create a custom VistaPE disk using BartPE as a foundation. Didn't work
Dowloaded the WAIK for the same thing. No go.
Took the hard drive out of the laptop, hooked it to my desk top then...
j:\tools\ imagex /apply j:\dell\images\factory.wim 1 i:\

and a I came out a winner. Woot. 'I' and 'J' were the drive letters my desktop assigned the laptop hard drive if you're wondering.

[osprey4]

Vista does not use the CTRL F11 thing. The procedure for Vista is here.

Sorry I didn't see this thread earlier.

[hankguy]

The imagex command is priceless. I was able to restore from the d: partition to the c: partition without pulling the drive. You are the best. I can't tell you how many times I watched the computer try to fix itself, now I can restore from the factory image.

YAY!

[becarrah]

Trying to resolve similar issue on inspiron 1720. Repair Your Computer just goes to the user logon screen. What actually works. I just want to restore my laptop back to factory settings.

[osprey4]

Hi Becarrah,

The instructions I linked to above tell you to log in to an admin account, then choose the Dell factory image to restore.

[Nude_Lewd_Man]

>>>>>>I STARTED WITH THIS:

Download Hiren's BootCD from Download Hiren’s BootCD 15.1 | HBCD Fan & Discussion Platform
Burn Hiren's BootCD to a CD
Put the Hiren's BootCD into CD Drive and Reboot computer
Select "Mini XP" from the menu
Double click on "My Computer"
Identify the partition that you use for your operating system
Right click on that partition and select "Format" to ensure a clean install

>>>>> ALL THIS WORKED FINE!

Identify the recovery partition and go to the "Imaging" folder
Right click on the "Imaging" folder and select "Command Prompt Here"
At the command prompt type (substituting c for your particular recovery partition and e for the partition that you use for your operating system)

imagex /apply c:\dell\image\factory.wim 1 e:\

>>>>AT THIS STEP IS WHERE I RAN INTO TROUBLE AND GOT THIS ERROR: imagex is not recognized as an internal or external command, operable program or batch file.


I'm not sure what to do now, because there IS a factory.wim file at this location. Please, any help would be appreciated, thank you!

vista, dell inspiron 537

Hello,

Please keep to just one thread per issue. I will remove the post from here and change the subject of your other thread about your issue.