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    Is there really a need to create a recovery disk?

    Discussion in 'Alienware M11x' started by zmarselle, Mar 8, 2011.

  1. zmarselle

    zmarselle Notebook Guru

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    See thread title. Mine came with what appears to be a recovery disk, so I was not sure if it was needed.
     
    zmarselle, Mar 8, 2011
    #1
  2. tehkrazyne5s

    tehkrazyne5s Notebook Geek

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    the "recovery disk" installs a FRESH NEW windows 7.

    you have to download all the drivers etc by yourself.

    from experience it sucks!!!

    keep the recovery disk because it makes it easier.
     
    tehkrazyne5s, Mar 8, 2011
    #2
  3. zmarselle

    zmarselle Notebook Guru

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    Thank you =)
     
    zmarselle, Mar 8, 2011
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  4. BatBoy

    BatBoy Notebook Nobel Laureate

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    Actually, you want to grab all of the drivers from support.dell.com. The recovery CD should be used only in an extreme case where you are not able to access the net.

    As an alternative, use AlienRespawn and create your emergency rescue media before doing anything else. This will provide you a path to restoring your system to the 'out of box' state. Use USB flash if you do not have access to an external optical drive.

    If you do not do this and later clean install windows, you will lose the recovery partition and AlienRespawn and not be able to create the rescue media later.

    This should be the first item on any new owner's checklist:

    *Create Emergency Rescue Media using AlienRespawn*
     
    BatBoy, Mar 8, 2011
    #4
  5. pspknightx

    pspknightx Notebook Consultant

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    Hmm.. i remembered last time i create the recovery disk after i used my m11x for around 1 week. During that 1 week, i installed some games like Starcraft 2 and software like Microsoft Office.

    After that i received my external DVD Rom then i created the Recovery Disk. Will the disk created is the "out of box" media disk or "included those new installed thing" media disk ? :confused:
     
    pspknightx, Mar 9, 2011
    #5
  6. ajslay

    ajslay Overclocker, PC Builder

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    well i wiped my hard drive clean when i first got it, and got every single driver i needed and copied them to a flash drive from another computer, i can install windows and get all my apps and drivers etc, done in about a half hour. and i use a bootable flash drive to do that too. pretty simple.
     
    ajslay, Mar 9, 2011
    #6
  7. ChileanLlama

    ChileanLlama Notebook Enthusiast

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    Aside from the drivers already mentioned, the only things missing from my install after using the AW Windows 7 Recovery disk were the customisation (wallpapers/logon/user avatar - see Batboy's sig), the Alienware FX themes and the bookmarks for Alienware sites.

    At the end of the day it really depends how confident you are with a clean install as you can easily restore all the missing bits.
     
    ChileanLlama, Mar 9, 2011
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  8. BatBoy

    BatBoy Notebook Nobel Laureate

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    No, it will not. The Recovery Media will only be a snapshot of the drive when it was first boxed up.

    Glad it worked out. :)
     
    BatBoy, Mar 9, 2011
    #8