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Smokinyoda

5 Posts

25689

April 24th, 2005 22:00

Dell™ PC Restore by Symantec Utility doesn't work

Trying to restore the system on a 1 month old Dimension 8400. When starting the computer I wait until I see the Dell logo then I push the ctrl key followed by the f11 key and release them both at the same time, but nothing ever happens, it just boots up normaly. If I hold them both for to long the computer starts beeping at me. Any ideas?

rickmktg

2 Intern

 • 

11.9K Posts

April 24th, 2005 23:00


@Smokinyoda wrote:
How hard is it to do with Ghost? I wish Dell never would have stopped including restore disks with there systems. I was on the phone complaining about that when they offered to send me the XP Pro disk. Any chance of getting a restore disk from them now? Isn't there a tech support forum somewhere staffed by Dell techies?


There is no such thing as a Restore disk.  The Symantec PC Restore function was loaded on the computer when it was shipped. 

I have not tried to do the Restore with Ghost.  Instructions have been posted by a few people.  http://forums.us.dell.com/supportforums/board/message?board.id=insp_harddrive&message.id=39234

Before you waste time, go into Drive Management and make sure that the partition is still there, after the C partition.  If you removed all partitions in your reinstall, it's gone for good.

Message Edited by rickmktg on 04-24-2005 08:41 PM

Smokinyoda

5 Posts

April 24th, 2005 23:00

How hard is it to do with Ghost? I wish Dell never would have stopped including restore disks with there systems. I was on the phone complaining about that when they offered to send me the XP Pro disk. Any chance of getting a restore disk from them now? Isn't there a tech support forum somewhere staffed by Dell techies?

Smokinyoda

5 Posts

April 24th, 2005 23:00

Yes I tried that. Followed the steps exactly before I posted here. A little background... Dell had sent me an XP Pro cd so I installed that, but noticed I didn't have any of the freebies Dell gives you. I then used my OS restore disk that I had made when I first bought the computer to go back to the factory settings. Still no extras. Thats when I started trying the pc restore software. Could the installation of XP Pro then the re-installation of XP home have somehow corrupted the partition where the restore files are located? Any help would be appreciated.

rickmktg

2 Intern

 • 

11.9K Posts

April 24th, 2005 23:00


@Smokinyoda wrote:
Yes I tried that. Followed the steps exactly before I posted here. A little background... Dell had sent me an XP Pro cd so I installed that, but noticed I didn't have any of the freebies Dell gives you. I then used my OS restore disk that I had made when I first bought the computer to go back to the factory settings. Still no extras. Thats when I started trying the pc restore software. Could the installation of XP Pro then the re-installation of XP home have somehow corrupted the partition where the restore files are located? Any help would be appreciated.

Using the Advanced Forum Search on the bottom of this page, you can quite easily find the answer to this often asked question.

When you installed the XP Pro you disabled the PC Restore function by modifying the MBR (master boot record).  Unless you have Ghost 2003 and know how to use it, this feature is no longer available.

That said, since you added Pro, the restore would put back Home which wouldn't help you.

Abrandoned

211 Posts

April 24th, 2005 23:00

Hi Smokinyoda,

Have you tryed the link below.

How Do I Use the Dell PC Restore by Symantec Utility? at http://support.dell.com/support/topics/global.aspx/support/kb/en/document?dn=1090151#step2

Smokinyoda

5 Posts

April 24th, 2005 23:00

Thanks for your help. All 3 drives are still there. All three using different file formats. Thanks for the post, now if I can get my hands on a copy of Ghost 9.0.

dg1261

623 Posts

April 26th, 2005 01:00


@Smokinyoda wrote:
Dell had sent me an XP Pro cd so I installed that, but noticed I didn't have any of the freebies Dell gives you. I then used my OS restore disk that I had made when I first bought the computer to go back to the factory settings. Still no extras. Thats when I started trying the pc restore software. Could the installation of XP Pro then the re-installation of XP home have somehow corrupted the partition where the restore files are located?

Not corrupted, but installing XP from a regular installation CD overwrote Dell's MBR.  Only Dell's special MBR recognizes the Ctrl+F11 key sequence.
 
See www.goodells.net/dellrestore for technical details on how the restore process operates.
 
See the section on "Troubleshooting...>Restoring the Dell MBR" for details on how to restore Dell's MBR and make your Ctrl+F11 work like it's supposed to.
 
If you don't use Ctrl+F11, see the section on "Restoring the Ghost Image" for details on how to manually restore the hidden Ghost image on your hard disk.  Note you do *not* have to buy Ghost to do this.
 
dg1261 (aka, Dan Goodell)
 

rickmktg

2 Intern

 • 

11.9K Posts

April 26th, 2005 01:00


@dg1261 wrote:

@Smokinyoda wrote:
Dell had sent me an XP Pro cd so I installed that, but noticed I didn't have any of the freebies Dell gives you. I then used my OS restore disk that I had made when I first bought the computer to go back to the factory settings. Still no extras. Thats when I started trying the pc restore software. Could the installation of XP Pro then the re-installation of XP home have somehow corrupted the partition where the restore files are located?

Not corrupted, but installing XP from a regular installation CD overwrote Dell's MBR.  Only Dell's special MBR recognizes the Ctrl+F11 key sequence.
 
See www.goodells.net/dellrestore for technical details on how the restore process operates.
 
See the section on "Troubleshooting...>Restoring the Dell MBR" for details on how to restore Dell's MBR and make your Ctrl+F11 work like it's supposed to.
 
If you don't use Ctrl+F11, see the section on "Restoring the Ghost Image" for details on how to manually restore the hidden Ghost image on your hard disk.  Note you do *not* have to buy Ghost to do this.
 
dg1261 (aka, Dan Goodell)
 
Great post Dan.

Smokinyoda

5 Posts

April 26th, 2005 03:00

Your a genius Dan!!!  I just tried your "Restoring the Ghost Image" technique and it worked perfectly! Next I am going to try restoring the mbr to gain use of the CTRL F11 function. Your info needs to be in a sticky somewhere as it seems many people have this same problem. Thanks again for your assistance.

dg1261

623 Posts

April 26th, 2005 07:00


@Smokinyoda wrote:
I just tried your "Restoring the Ghost Image" technique and it worked perfectly! Next I am going to try restoring the mbr to gain use of the CTRL F11 function. Your info needs to be in a sticky somewhere as it seems many people have this same problem. Thanks again for your assistance.

You're welcome.  The pages are new, and I'm still working on them. 
 
I'm also working on an enhancement to my dellmbr.com so that it can automatically make the fixes it identifies, rather than requiring the manual editing of disk sectors.  (If anyone lurking wants to beta-test, contact me by email and I'll give you a link to download the enhanced version.)
 
 

BubBowen

635 Posts

April 26th, 2005 23:00

Dan,
 
Along the sames lines as above, I have all 3 of the original Dell Partitions saved as images.  If I restore those images to the drive using Ghost and on the Utility Partition tell it to restore the MBR, will this fix it to factory default you think? 
 
Thanks in advance!

dg1261

623 Posts

April 27th, 2005 03:00

@BubBowen wrote:
Along the sames lines as above, I have all 3 of the original Dell Partitions saved as images.  If I restore those images to the drive using Ghost and on the Utility Partition tell it to restore the MBR, will this fix it to factory default you think? 
Probably not all the way there, but close enough to be easily repaired.  If you're starting with a new, blank disk, you would restore your three Ghost images in sequential order, 1-2-3.  From there, run dellmbr.com to determine what minor issues need to be fixed. 
 
Ghost will restore the proper file system formats to the partitions, and will probably also restore the correct type-descriptors in the partition table and the proper label in the partition boot records.
 
It probably won't get the Dell MBR, but that's easily restored as a separate action.  It also probably won't restore the backup partition table in the third partition, so you may need to do that manually.  That's okay, because unless the new disk's partition table precisely matches the old disk's, you've got to refresh the backup p.t. anyway.
 
I think your background question is, "Can I duplicate the Dell System Restore on a new (perhaps even larger) hard disk?"  The answer is yes.  You can even change the partition sizes if you want, and it can still be done.
 
Just for kicks, I have even retrofitted a couple pre-7/04 Dimension 4600's that did not originally have the Restore partition.  I resized the XP partition to make room for a third partition, used Ghost 2003 to put an image of the XP partition into the third partition, and copied the rest of the support files from a newer Dim 3000.  After a few minor changes like adding the Dell MBR, the 4600's now have a restore function just like the post-7/04 Dells.
 
BTW, in other threads, others have previously noted that you can't repartition without breaking the DSR capability.  Refreshing the backup partition table will fix that and give you back the DSR, even if you have more than three partitions.

keiryu

15 Posts

April 29th, 2005 00:00

Hi Dan, I have a similar problem where my MBR was destroyed and the ctrl-F11 function does not work. What I did was split my main partition into two smaller ones. The partition with the image is still in tact. May I ask how I can boot into DOS if I do not have a floppy. I was reading your write up on manually resotring the MBR. Any type of assistance will be great. Thanks.

Kei

dg1261

623 Posts

April 29th, 2005 16:00


@keiryu wrote:
Hi Dan, I have a similar problem where my MBR was destroyed and the ctrl-F11 function does not work. What I did was split my main partition into two smaller ones. The partition with the image is still in tact. May I ask how I can boot into DOS if I do not have a floppy. I was reading your write up on manually resotring the MBR.
Kei,
 
I'm not clear on what you mean by "my MBR was destroyed."  There are things that destroy the MBR boot code, but repartitioning isn't one of them.  Repartitioning can indeed break the restore process, but it's because the backup partition table doesn't match anymore, not because the boot code was destroyed.  If you still get the blue "www.dell.com" bar when you boot, your MBR should be okay.  My dellmbr.com utility should be able to help identify which you need to fix.
 
Anyway, you have to be able to boot to DOS to do either (restore the Dell MBR boot code or the backup partition table).  If you don't have a floppy drive, here are a few alternatives:
 
(1) boot from a bootable CD.  Use another machine to create a Win98 bootable CDR/CDRW that includes dellmbr.com and whatever additional support files you'd normally use from floppy.
 
(2) boot from a USB flash disk.  These things are becoming pretty ubiqitous, and they can be made DOS-bootable.  Beware that if you boot this way, you'll probably need to use the '/81' switch with dellmbr.com.
 
(3) remove the hard disk and temporarily put it in another machine that has a floppy drive.
 
It should go without saying, but if you're not comfortable with any of these techniques, either find a friend who is, or don't do it.  This is brain surgery, and if you screw up you can lose everything on your hard disk.  Make sure you first backup anything that is irreplaceable.
 
 

keiryu

15 Posts

April 29th, 2005 17:00

Excellent. Thank you for your tips! I'll try it when I get home. Its a brand new Inspiron 6000 so there is no valuable information on it. Will let you know how it goes.

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