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Updated to Windows 7 and now no recovery partition


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#1
jr70895

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I have 2 Dell 1525 laptops that came with Vista operating systems on both. They are the exact same in virtually every detail. One of the laptops was hardly used and still set-up like day one. The 2nd laptop was used quite often and upgraded to Windows 7.
I am selling both and wish to restore to factory settings and have read up on the details on how to do it.
However, on the one that was upraded to Windows 7 the recovery partion is no longer there and I can't restore to factory settings. Not sure if that took place during the upgrade or not. I do not have the original CDs that was sent with the laptops when they were new. My dear sweet wife trashed them during one spring cleaning episode.

My question is this, is it possible to copy the recovery partion info from the one laptop that still has it and then copy the recovery partion to the updated one.

If so can someone tell me the steps to do that, another words when I copy to the updated laptop how do I get the recovery partion info where it needs to be in order for it to work properly. Actually, does it matter the exact location where it is sent to such as to My Documents etc?

Thanks so much
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#2
Ztruker

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The easiest way I know of is to clone the good laptop to the problem laptop. Macrium Reflect Free has this capability. You will need to mount the hard drive from the target laptop in a external USB enclosure or connect it via a USB Universal Drive Adapter (to clone).

Otherwise you can use Macrium to store a image of the hard drive, including MBR, Recovery partition and boot partition to an external hard drive. Steps are basically like this:

1. Download and install Macrium Reflect Free on the source laptop.
2. Create the Macrium Rescue disc.
3. Run Macrium and create a image backup of the hard drive including MBR, Recovery partition and boot partition to an external hard drive.
4. Move the external drive to the target laptop.
5. Boot with the Macrium Rescue disc.
6. Restore the image from the hard drive to the laptop hard drive.

That's it. Takes time but it's not difficult.,
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#3
SleepyDude

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Hi,

Another suggestion on the Vista machine use the Dell application to create the Recovery DVD's, wipe the HDD of the Windows 7 machine and then use the DVD's to restore the machine. The recovery partition and everything else will be recreated like the machine was on first boot.
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