Restore Complete but Stuck on DRMK

Hi,

My restore partition was not working for months, but yesterday I just wanted to try it again, so I run the PC Restore and suddenly it was successful, however when the system reboots I get

Loading PBR for descriptor 1...done

Loading DRMK version 8.00

and thats it... the HDD LED stays on constantly and no message after that. I waited for 15 mins but no result, also tried restarting several times but I am always stuck with Loading DRMK version 8.00...

DSRFIX showed me that the MBR is ok... is there any suggestions on fixing this problem? thanx

 

try again or get xp cd from dell along with all other disks format and reinstall
jim

 

thanx but I already have the xp cds and everything, and I tried it 2 times but I get the same result. The thing is that I dont want to do a full format, because my restore image has no malware because I dont live in the US. So I find the restore function quite useful. Because with reformat or restore I get the same performence so I would choose restore because it much faster and easier.

 

what you can do is install xp then restore your ghost image see link
http://www.notebookforums.com/thread149197.html

jim

 

DRMK (Dell Real Mode Kernel) is Dell's version of MS-DOS, and is the O/S used when booting to the Restore or Utility partitions on recent Dell systems. Seems like your installation of DRMK has gone bad. Check here for a lot of usefull info on Dell utility partitions:

http://www.goodells.net/dellutility/index.htm

Good luck

 

Have you formatted or edited your partitions in any way? that could be causing majority of your problems. Dell has it set up where the restore needs to detect the same setup as you got it.

 

I've been trying to solve this problem on my Dell XPS 400.
I have successfully restored the computer to its out of box windows setting.
(at leaset i tought so) till the comp. rebooted and gave me the same problem
"loading DRMK version 8.00". Now i'm stuck here, the warranty has expired
and i dont know how to fix this. what can i do to fix this problem.
dell wont even let me e-mail them without spending $99 to start with.
I have tryed this website http://www.goodells.net/dellutility/index.htm
but it does not cover this particular issue.
has anyone solved this problem, is there any wasy of bypassing this issue?
CAN ANYONE HELP ME?

any help is appriciated

 

I think i got it this is what i'm dooing know and it seems to be working
i have tryed reinstalling windows using the XP CD but i couldnot get past
this point "Setup did not find any hard disk drives installed in your system" so googled this quote and got the answer, i guess i fished in the wrong pond.
i'm formating on of the partitions now, so if anything goes wrong i'll let you know. (here is where i found it http://www.techspot.com/vb/topic18329.html)

I completely feel your pain. I have the same system and just fixed the same problem. Here's what I did. And by the way, 2 hours of tech support with Dell did nothing for me other than give me practice understanding Pakistan accents. I eventually stumbled on the solution myself w/o dell's help.

Reboot your system and hit F2 as soon as you see the Dell startup screen (the options are F2 for setup, F12 for boot sequence).

In the System Setup screen, do these steps.

Select Drives:
Make sure your Diskette Drive (3.5 floppy) is set properly (Usually set to Internal)
Make sure that "Drive 0: SATA-0" drive is set to "ON"

Go to "SATA Operation":

Your system proabaly came set to "RAID Autodetect / AHCI" - THIS SETTING CAUSES YOUR SYSTEM TO GO INTO AN IDE LOOP AND DOESN'T ALLOW IT TO FIND YOUR FACTORY INSTALLED SATA DRIVE.

CHANGE THE SATA OPERATION SETTING TO "COMBINATION"

Reboot - make sure that the boot sequence is set to CD rom before HD and make sure that the reinstall CD is in the drive. Setup will load, hit enter to reinstall XP. Your HD should now be detected and you should see the licensing agreement.

If you have your files backed up I reccommend deleting the partition and reformatting prior to installing XP, it will give you that option after the license agreement.

Once you have successfully reinstalled the OS, Dell reccommends that you change the SATA Operation setting back to RAID AUTODETECT / AHCI (or back to whatever your factory setting was) to avoid any problems with other IDE devices installed on your system.

Hope that helps!

Good luck!

 

I figured it out, first you need to get a hold of hiren's boot cd, google it and you can find it, burn it to a cd, this cd has a buttload of different programs and such to help you wiht your computer, what you do is put it in and let it load b4 the os boots, you will get a list of different tools categories, go to the recovery category and select the digidiskpatch, it should load the program, you have to select you hard drive in the first option, then head to the MBR options and then the mbr hardisk attributes, you will probably notice that you hardrive is disabled, theres your problem, reactivate and deactivate the anything else on the list, then exit the program, let it restart your computer and voila, that should get it.
Your probablly gonna need to torrent to get a hold of hiren boot disk, i used ver9.3 just in case anyone needs to know.

 

This happened to me on my Dell Inspiron. I read these posts and it gave me enough info to solve the problem. Rebooted the laptop and held down F2. Chose the Power Management setting and go to the HD. MY SATA was not enabled. Changed it to the factory default of "enabled", exited the Setup, and it booted right up.

 

Don't forget if you are doing a clean install for the M1530, you will want to download the SATA drivers (Intel Matrix Storage Manager) from Dell's driver downloads page for your system if its a XPS M1530 or M1330, you will want to extract the drivers downloaded to a USB stick and load the drivers before actually starting the installation of Vista.