[Rosebud13082]

Hello! I need to restore my son's Dell Inspiron N7010 to factory image. There is no utility to do so, but I have all of his disks (requested of Dell and received them).

Yes there's a factory image on d:, and I can get to the "Advanced Options" like they instruct at http://support.dell....nt?docid=362066, BUT the Recovery Option "Dell Factory Image Restore" isn't there as an option.

Dell tells me there must be a virus causing the omission of that choice (?) And the software is out of the 60-day warrantee.

So. I have reformatted and reinstalled the operating system, etc. on many PC's.

Q -
(1) Do I do the same thing on this laptop? Format C:*.*? (IF YOU'RE READING THIS, DO NOT NOT NOT PUT THIS COMMAND IN UNLESS YOU KNOW WHAT YOU'RE DOING!! IT WILL ERASE ALL OF YOUR FILES!)
(2) from d: or from c:?
(3) Then install the drivers and the operating system, etc. .. , just as with a PC?

Thanks for your help!

- Annette

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Format C:*.*

FWIW, that command would return an error message similar to "Invalid drive specification.". Type "format /?" (without the quotes) to see the valid options for the format command.

You do not need to pre-format a hard drive when installing Windows XP, Vista or 7. Simply boot from the Windows CD/DVD and the Windows installation routine will take care of the partitioning and formatting.

[SpywareDr]

Format C:*.*

FWIW, that command would return an error message similar to "Invalid drive specification.". Type "format /?" (without the quotes) to see the valid options for the format command.

You do not need to pre-format a hard drive when installing Windows XP, Vista or 7. Simply boot from the Windows CD/DVD and the Windows installation routine will take care of the partitioning and formatting.

[Rosebud13082]

Thank you!

[SpywareDr]

No problem.

[Rosebud13082]

OK. I'm still researching and trying to find a way to do this and have it look just as from the factory. I figured out on my VISTA computer how to restore to factory image, but when I look in my son's WINDOWS 7 recovery partition, it's empty. But in Windows Explorer, it says about 1/2 of the Recovery partition is used. Do they hide the files in 7, or should I be asking Dell what happened to the Recovery partition files?

[SpywareDr]

Do they hide the files in 7

Yes.