The dark side of a fresh installation of Vista on M1330

I like a clean system, as most of the people here does. therefore I reinstalled Vista Extreme on my M1330 . Well I also like the mediadirect, so I used the mediadirect disk first.

Then I found out, I lost the Recovery Partition, Well, this I dont mind at all, since I have the vista extreme, I can just backup the complete Pc and reimage the pc whenever I want. I did tried this before I inserting the mediadirect disk, making sure that all works as planned.

However, after the vista installation and performed a complete PC backup, I tried loads of the software on vista for a day befoore decided to go back to a fresh installed Vista. Guess what I found? there is no longer the windows recovery enviroment on the HDD when you press ctr+f8 . I then Have to use the DVD to start the wre, which allow me to roll back the system. this is very inconvinient of cause, comparing to a all HDD roll back.

I missed The Dell Recovery Partition . with it you can roll back to your own backup or to the dell factory image (if you still kept the files) without the DVD. If I will do that again, I will keep the DRP (about 100M), just deleting the backup partitation D: (10G).

Does anyone know a way of putting the HDD back to the orignal states? how can I install mediadirect, and install the WRE ON THE HDD in the same time?

 

you're out of luck with the Dell Recovery partition, unless ya send it back to Dell,but their are numerous threads about reinstalling media direct on the machine, including mine,
http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?p=2441998#post2441998

 

reinstalling media direct has no problem for me. that is straight forward enough. however, the lost of Win RE is a real pain. Is there any simple way of reinstall this very useful tool?

here is a link descibing of how to get it done but it is very complex

http://www.vistaclues.com/how-to-install-the-windows-recovery-environment-including-startup-repair/

 

There is no way to go back, yet tons and tons of articles on how to do a fresh install that warn you of the dangers of it.

Secondly, that very useful tool is useless.


You have Vusta Ultimate according to your signature rather than Vista Extreme which is a good thing because MS hasnt released Vista Extreme yet. Im sure someone will start a thread about it now though.

Lets now get passed the past and fix up your world. Follow the instructions below and do a complete and fresh install with MediaDirect. Install all your drivers again. Do the tweaks listed below.

Now...do a Complete PC Backup from Ultimate. You now have the best backup set you can ask for... a completely tweaked system, built by you, with no bloat...and always right there ready to be reinstall if you ever make a mistake again.

 

I concur with flamenko, why waste your time when ya have the Vista install dvd available?
really easy to use, just boot from disk and wala! PC Restore option. (and a whole lot more)

 

flamenko, thanks for pointing that out,, I guess I had too much drink tonight .

Yes I did tried all your treaks, which is great fun.:laugh: . and I intend to keep this treaked copy of the backup, and always goes back to it whenever I had done with a software that do not functioning well in Vista.

However, the problem is that I will have to carry the vista DVD to acess the recovery function . this takes time, and the most importance is, it does not look cool

 

I hope you can came up with a bright idea.... such as imaging a HDD for the same model?

 

Well, actually you would have to carry the Vista DVD and the backup set you created. I really dont understand why as once you have your system set perfect, you wont need that on your side.

I have rebuilt my OS 7 times now, each time making a backup set a little closer to perfect. This is next to impossible with a 64Bit OS....but I can say...

My system absolutely flies...and it is very stable...I have experienced only very minor incompatibility problems, all which I found a solution to.

Its something to be proud of as well...I have had four friends who just had to see the OS as I have created it...They cant believe 64 Bit is running seamlessly.

 

my M1330 boot up very fast, and I alway missed to get into DVD boot...

whenever it boot from the DVD, it is noisy...

 

I rebuild my system lots of times... but I would like to be able to roll back to a system with just all the drivers installed, or with just the drivers and your tweaks installed....

the truth is, I backup a perfect installed version on my D driver, as well as the data. and I did like to try loads of the rubbish software and do some strange things on my system. therefore I need to go back to the just installed version of the backup from time to time. acessing that from DVD is not good comparing to access it from HDD, of cause. I guess lots of the people dont care that at all,but I am mind set to this at the moment.

it will be useful, will it?

 

Yup. Yup. Yup.

 

see, I can create a image, preload with vista and the drivers only for 7GHz space on the HDD. everytime you need to reinstall the system you can always start from there.......

I know you are very good at it, and am trying to get your mind set at this as well

 

if anyone load a image for that patition, will it work?

 

You can use that partition for a 7 GB image of your own and use a partition manager boot-up CD like Ghost, Acronis, or a freeware/open source equivalent to just dump your custom image back to your (C system partition.

Note to others, I have used flamenko's and others' tweaks, and I have yet to get the 20 second boot-up time I had on Dell's factory image with minimal tweaking. My advice is to determine if it's really necessary to wipe it - you might do very well with having that restore option.

As I mentioned in a different thread, if you're on the road with only your data and no CDs, you can back up your data and use the recovery partition to get you up and running in 15 minutes. That's priceless in business terms. If you enjoy tinkering, you can't hurt it by wiping the partition, but you will lose that fail-safe.

Note, as a compromise, if you format ONLY, not remove and recreate the partition, I believe the OS recovery will still work, and you'll still be able to use put on a fresh Vista (or XP) install.

 

My question is how can I put things back as it was...

 

As has been stated you cannot. You cannot restore data without having a source to restore the data from. If you wiped the hard drive that came in the m1330 and deleted all the partitions then there is nothing on there to put back. You would have to send it back to Dell for them to do it if that's something you really HAVE to have. To me it's worthless and I care nothing about it but I do still have mine since I replaced the 120 gig 5400rpm drive in mine with a 160 gig 7200rpm and did the clean install to the new drive.

 

I do have the source now.. I just borrowed one HDD with everything on it. can I replicate the ultility partition to my own HDD? I dont mind the factory image. I just want to be able to access the PC restore from the ultility and the mediadirect

 

Maybe something like Acronis could do it -- back up an image of the borrowed hard drive to a DVDR, then use that DVDR to restore back to your wiped hard drive. Acronis is supposed to back up your entire hard drive.

 

Isnt Vista Extreme actually a cracked version of Vista (dont know which version) optimized for gaming by some warez group or something ?

 

I believe this link will allow what you are looking for:

http://www.acronis.com/homecomputing/download/trueimage/

Unless it has changed in recent month, the 15 day trial is fully functional. You can make a complete system backup and their backup disk is bootable (if I recall correctly) with the restore part of their program.

The complete system backup on the new set of DVDs has no time limitations...so you can restore a century from now if you want.

 

flamenko

I found that by using the complete PC backup in windows vista ultimate, you acturlly backed up the whole dell ultility partition and others. So I used it, and recovered my dell ultility partition!!

I used it now, very much convienient comparing to the DVD based wre. go back to my version of fresh vista very easily, in 5 minutes. The only thing is that the complete pc backup image I used to put pack the dell ultility does not have the directmedia-- it was deleted BEFORE the complete pc backup is done............ so will anyone kind enough to offer a backup image of the orignal HDD? no need of the 10G dell restore partition, just the 100M EISA, 2.5G media direct, and the necessary C:; I will NOT use the windows on C: drive at all, since all I need to do is to reimage the HDD partitions back to my HDD, and then perform a fresh installation of vista immediately. I beleive such a image is less than 6Gb if the image is created after a diskclean up. can anyone help?? flamenko, like the wre from HDD, dont you?

 

AND be aware of not connecting to the internet when you do a complete restore with other peoples backup image in attempt to repair the dell ultility and media direct partition. I do not know what will happen but recommond that do not connect to the internet, and do not boot into the just restored windows. just reinstall the vista using your own copy of DVD and make your of backup image. Note you must have vista bussiness or vista ultimate to recovery your HDD partitions.