Unable to Access Recovery Partition

Hey all,

Working on reformatting a computer for a friend. It's a Dell XPS m1530 running Windows Vista 32.

No recovery cd's to speak of, but it does have a D: drive that hosts recovery files. I have no idea why I'm unable to access it though.

I looked around various places online, and it seems as if the correct key combination is CTRL+F11 on boot, but that's not giving me any results. I'm unable to find it from the boot menu as well.

I read somewhere that if the recovery partition has been used before, it can't be used again. Is this true? The logic didn't make sense to me, but, you never know.

What steps can I take to get this computer freshly re-formatted without the use of a physical CD to do so?

Thanks in advance,

Blake

 

Blake try this

Restoring Using Dell PC Restore/Recovery Partition

XP and Vista/7 have diff methods

 

Thanks for the link, ray4jc.
Unfortunately, when I get into the "Advanced Boot Menu" with F8, I don't have the option to "repair".

 

it should look like this



then you have to login and you should get a 'System Recover Options' screen with an option at the bottom that says' Dell Factory Image Restore'

 

The partition could be corrupted in such a way that they computer can't "see" it. I remember this happening to my D630 that had a recovery partition, since I had the Windows disk and resource CD I ended up just deleting it.

As long as the partition is intact and the computer can "see" it, then you can always use it to restore the computer..as many times as you need.

If you get his product key using something like Magical Jellybean, you can get a Vista .ISO from NBR (the microsoft sancitioned "Digital River" links) and simply put his product key in during the registration process.

 

Indeed. That's option I'm missing.


I'll try the alternate method. Thanks booboo!