[WishBone]

Greetings,

I have a Dell Inspiron 15R 5520 running Windows Home Premium x64. I recently tried a key my friend gave me to upgrade to Ultimate. When I found out it was blocked, I resorted to Windows Loader and this happened. I know I shouldn't have done that and I'd like to revert back to the out of box state.

My problem is that my OS disk is now on D. My recovery disc(which is hidden) is now set as primary on C. My laptop keeps on restarting and I couldn't even get the menu to come up by pressing F8. Any ideas how I can fix this? I've tried settings on BIOS and there's nothing I can do to solve it. I think it's booting C drive but C contains my hidden recovery partition.

Before

C - OS

After

C - Hidden Recovery Disk
D - OS


I checked by running my WinXP disc and getting to the point where you have to format and partition drives. It says C is set as Primary but it contains my recovery disk.

EDIT: I then recently performed this tutorial: http://www.sevenforu...ark-active.html. I marked the recovery disk as inactive as well. Then when I restarted, it said bootmgr was missing. press ctrl alt del. Then I performed this tut: http://www.sevenforu...issing-fix.html

Edited by Cashes, 10 January 2013 - 06:47 AM.

[Advertisements]

Can you offer a screen shot of what it shows in Disk Management please.

[Wolfeymole]

Can you offer a screen shot of what it shows in Disk Management please.

[WishBone]

I'm not sure how I can do that when it doesn't even boot up the OS.

[Wolfeymole]

Ok what operating system disks do you have at the moment because your setup is a real mess Cashes.

[WishBone]

Yea I know. I shouldn't have tried the key my friend gave me. I actually thought it was legit because he said it works for multiple computers. All I have now is a Windows 7 Ultimate 32bit but I don't have a serial for it. Maybe I can reformat so the computer will boot and run the recovery disk?

[Wolfeymole]

Did you actually make any Dell back to factory disks when it was running Premium or did you get the disk with it from Dell because to my mind mainstream OEM suppliers do not provide system re-install disks any more.

Let me be perfectly frank and suggest that the Win 7 Ultimate 32bit disk you have now is in fact a pirated version.

if the latter is the case then as much as I would like to help I'm afraid I cannot as I think I would find myself banned from Geeks to Go.

[WishBone]

It was Home Premium and it was legit. After I tried the key, it upgraded to Ultimate and I guess it became illegal? It was unintentional. It was on trial for a few more days. I have resorted to downloading a fresh OEM Home Premium and using my serial on it.

[Wolfeymole]

Why download a fresh OEM when Win 7 Premium is perfectly ok?

[WishBone]

I'm sorry I'm confused here, I thought OEM means its a fresh untouched copy. I AM downloading a Home Premium and using my own serial that came with the laptop. I'm trying to install one of me old illegal discs on it to see if I can just make it boot up so I can run recovery.

[Wolfeymole]

An OEM means Original Equipment Manufacturer and people such as Dell, Acer, Compaq etc used to supply these disks as full re-install disk so should anything go wrong with the system you could do a full brand new install.

Nowadays this is not the case and it is down to the new owner of a brand new machine supplied by such people as above to make their own recovery disks which are no where near a full re-install disk.

Where are you downloading the OEM from?

[WishBone]

I found a page on Dell which offers all versions on bootable iso. It's labeled Digital River.

[Wolfeymole]

Ok that's sounds good please let us know how you go on.

[WishBone]

Ok that's sounds good please let us know how you go on.

Since I have a clean re-install of Home Premium as my last resort, I'm trying ways to recover my system from my recovery partition.

Here's a screenshot of what it looks like right now.

http://i.imgur.com/f3x5U.png
http://i.imgur.com/TZ0ZN.png

I assume this is the reason why its not detected when I try to recover.

[Wolfeymole]

I'm not quite sure how you've managed to set the primary boot partition C: as the 3rd partition because the listing should be OEM, C: and then D:

If you want to get this thing working again I suggest that you re-install Home Premium but this time delete all partitions before doing so, you will find this in the section where it asks you where you want to put Windows under Advanced.

[WishBone]

I'm not quite sure how you've managed to set the primary boot partition C: as the 3rd partition because the listing should be OEM, C: and then D:

If you want to get this thing working again I suggest that you re-install Home Premium but this time delete all partitions before doing so, you will find this in the section where it asks you where you want to put Windows under Advanced.

I did a clean reinstall of Windows 7 Home Premium 64bit. I also installed all drivers for it. Everything's fine now but I'd like the out of box state so my mind will be at ease. I suspected that the recovery partition isn't recognized because it was created by dell datasafe. I downloaded and installed dell datasafe. I was right. When I open the program and chose restore, it shows me that I have a restore point to June 26, 2012 which was I assume, the out of box state. Also, the recover disk is now hidden and back to it's normal state. One last problem below. When I proceed to restore, it restarts and takes me to system recovery.

Mine looks like this now:
http://i.imgur.com/6uEur.png

It should have this:
http://i.imgur.com/gOnXB.jpg

How can I restore the option on the second image? I think that's the only thing I'm missing so I can restore the recovery disk to C.