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randavis
74 Challenger 440 4bbl
join:2000-01-19
Blue Springs, MO

randavis to koitsu

Member

to koitsu

Re: Factory restore on a Dell

said by koitsu:

I have gotten around it by accessing the recovery partition through my own WinPE USB stick or a Linux boot disk and simply copying off the ~6GByte Factory.wim file to another media (USB stick, etc.) and then applying it myself to C: using imagex.exe + using bcdboot.exe to install the bootstraps, but in doing so you lose the recovery partition capability.

I got to Disk Management and assigned a drive letter to the Recovery partition. After that, I could see the files there. I did run across the .wim file, but I never saw an executable to run.

I'm guessing that imagex is a third party program?

I did e-mail Dell support about obtaining the restore disks. We'll see what they want for them.

So far, I've got about $100 in a screen and two batteries, so I think another $10 or $20 won't exceed the value of the machine.

koitsu
MVM
join:2002-07-16
Mountain View, CA
Humax BGW320-500

koitsu

MVM

imagex is an official Microsoft program. It does not come with Windows. It comes with what's known as the WAIK (Windows Automated Installation Kit), and requires you to download a gigantic EXE or ISO to deal with, blah blah blah -- the usual Microsoft rigmarole (waste tons of bandwidth and disk space and installing a bunch of useless nonsense just to get a single file).

If you're looking for the imagex.exe binary, I'm sure you can find it, or ask someone (hint hint) if they can send it to you. It's a standalone executable. There are 64-bit and 32-bit versions of this binary, and which one you use depends on which OS you're running (NOT which OS / .WIM file you are installing).

Please be aware that you can completely destroy the contents of a filesystem using imagex, so if you pass it the wrong drive letter, you could be destroying the wrong thing. It is not a partitioning tool -- it simply overwrites the contents of a filesystem with whatever .WIM file you give it.

You may also need to use bcdboot.exe to reinstall the boot blocks and bootloader (depends on the behaviour you get after doing imagex + rebooting). Like imagex, there are 64-bit and 32-bit versions, and which one you use depends on which OS you're running.