Dell Owners - Restore question

[bgc99]

How do you go about restoring the operating system if you should have a hard disk failure or just want to install a new one at some point? I thought I saw some mention of a hidden partition. If that is the case, what happens if the disk fails?

Thanks,
BGC

 

[DaveSimmons]

Lattitude from small business includes a CD. There is a tiny hidden partition on the hard drive but it is only for hardware diagnostics.

 

[compusaguy]

They should have included a windows CD to restore. You might have to call them.

 

[imported_Hi]

keep pressing f10 during startup to see if it has a HD partition

 

[Benmohr]

I had a Dell Deminsion and I changed the hard drive and re loaded windows XP with no problems. Also did the same with my old Latitude C600. In fact as I recall it never even asked for me to activate Windows.

 

[bigal40]

Not that we don't want to help you but you should call dell. They have pretty good tech support and heck you did already pay for it.

 

[jpeyton]

It should be required that all new Dell owners toss their OEM Windows CD and do a fresh install immediately. The put so much junk on their systems when they ship that it takes at least 3 times longer to boot up than it should, and memory usage is way too high for a freshly booted system at idle.

 

[ohnnyj]

Originally posted by: jpeyton
It should be required that all new Dell owners toss their OEM Windows CD and do a fresh install immediately. The put so much junk on their systems when they ship that it takes at least 3 times longer to boot up than it should, and memory usage is way too high for a freshly booted system at idle.

Not if you buy a workstation or any business computer. They understand you don't want/need anything superfluous.

 

[neutralizer]

Yeah, the Latitude has been pretty clean. My restore files are on CD though.

 

[dew042]

i've restored about 100 dells in a professional capacity -- they come with 1 os disk and usually 1 or more driver/application disks. I have never seen a partition, just needs a fresh install....

dew.

 

[bgc99]

Thanks for the replies. I don't have a Dell but have been tempted by some of the deals. I was just wondering about the OS. I'll probably end up building my own this time unless some amazing deal comes along.

BGC

 

[jpeyton]

Originally posted by: ohnnyj

Originally posted by: jpeyton
It should be required that all new Dell owners toss their OEM Windows CD and do a fresh install immediately. The put so much junk on their systems when they ship that it takes at least 3 times longer to boot up than it should, and memory usage is way too high for a freshly booted system at idle.

Not if you buy a workstation or any business computer. They understand you don't want/need anything superfluous.

Nope, I buy tons of desktop computers through their SB website, and they come with the same crap. You may be correct though; they probably don't install that stuff on their workstations or servers.

 

[gpgofast]

My recent 8400 came with both an XP disc and and restore partition on the drive, as well as a diagnositic partition. The restore partition will reload all the crap that is preloaded, but the XP cd did NOT require me to install SATA drivers when I installed my new Raptor as my primary drive. GP