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    Recovering Dell Inspiron Laptop

    Discussion in 'Dell' started by EclipseRydr, Mar 7, 2009.

  1. EclipseRydr

    EclipseRydr Notebook Consultant

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    So last month I had a bunch of computers stolen but there was 1 hard drive that was not stolen. That hard drive was inside a Dell Inspiron E1405 that was stolen, but prior to being stolen, I had removed it from the laptop...

    Would the Service Tag information be on the hard drive somewhere? I bought an external case so now I'm trying to explore...
     
    EclipseRydr, Mar 7, 2009
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  2. dg1261

    dg1261 Notebook Geek

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    Is it the original hard drive that came with the laptop? If so, and if you didn't delete the DellUtility partition, it may be in there.

    You will first need to unhide the DellUtility partition by using a partition table editor to change the first partition's 'type' from 'DE' to '06'. Then reboot (or if it's external, disconnect/reconnect) and Windows should give it a drive letter.

    Open that drive letter in Windows Explorer and look for the seal.ini file. Open seal.ini in a text editor (notepad is fine) and search for the line that begins "ServiceTag=".

    Note this is a simple text file, with the ServiceTag value therein edited at the factory to match the machine this seal.ini file belongs to. If a user manually re-edits the seal.ini file or copies it from another machine, it won't necessarily match anymore. But that's uncommon, and if it's still intact as it came from the factory, it should be correct.
     
    dg1261, Mar 7, 2009
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  3. EclipseRydr

    EclipseRydr Notebook Consultant

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    interested, thanks, and YES it is the original hard drive, however, i formatted it once...

    does that mean it's no use?
     
    EclipseRydr, Mar 7, 2009
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  4. atbnet

    atbnet Notebook Prophet

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    Nope if you formatted it, it is gone.
     
    atbnet, Mar 7, 2009
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