[H] Selling M11x - Reformating Questions

Hi,

I am selling my m11x, and I was wondering if I could reformat to the stock configuration without the use of a recovery CD? I did some searching on the forums, and theres this post about a USB recovery stick... Can I use an external hard drive to reformat instead? I've cloned my hard drive completely to an external drive, and this external drive is the only storage device I have. I'm not going to go out and buy an 8 GB USB stick just to reformat.

And also, is there other options besides reformating to get rid of my personal information?

Thanks for the help.

 

Your m11x has a built in restore partition. All you have to do is press F8 at or right before boot.

 

Hmm pressing f8 does nothing when I boot the machine. Any ideas why this is the case?

 

You might need to boot to a bootable CD like Hiren's and set the recovery partition as the active partition.

 

Press F8 right before the Windows 7 boot screen comes up. It will bring up a menu, and you need to select the recovery option.

 

I will piggyback on this thread..

what exactly is in the recovery section??

I am thinking of re-installing windows but don't want to deal too much with the drivers but don't want the bloatware.

 

If you bought from the Dell Outlet you may not even have a restore partition. Mine didn’t come with one so I had to do it the old fashioned way using the Windows disk, drivers, apps, then tons and tons of updates.

 

I am currently dual booting windows 7 and Ubuntu. So the only thing that f8 does is the advanced options when its on the selection screen for both OS.

If I hold f8 before boot, it makes a beeping noise, if I hit f8 anytime after that, nothing happens.

on the advanced menu, I have the option to repair computer, but after I select that, it just goes in a circle back to the Win 7/Ubuntu selection screen.

 

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