Restore Factory Settings

[Guest]

I just bought a laptop (secondhand) it is a Dell Inspiron e1505. It
originally came with Vista Home Premium. The previous owner installed XP
Pro. I would like to restore back to Vista.

There is only one hard drive that was partitioned into four. One of them,
drive D, consists of a recovery restore utility - Dell Factory Image Restore.
The instructions are to use F8 after boot and goto Windows Advanced Boot
Options select the option "Repair My Computer". However I do not have that
option.

I have clicked on the app just to see. But I get an error window - it is
blank except for "error". I am assuming because I am on that drive and have
windows already open and it wants to reformat the drive. I have seen the
hidden file that has the info it is 4.21 GB and it is a WIM file. How can I
restore without doing so through Windows Advanced Boot Options?

Any help would be much appreciated!

 

[Admiral Q]

I just bought a laptop (secondhand) it is a Dell Inspiron e1505. It
originally came with Vista Home Premium. The previous owner installed XP
Pro. I would like to restore back to Vista.

There is only one hard drive that was partitioned into four. One of them,
drive D, consists of a recovery restore utility - Dell Factory Image
Restore.
The instructions are to use F8 after boot and goto Windows Advanced Boot
Options select the option "Repair My Computer". However I do not have
that
option.

I have clicked on the app just to see. But I get an error window - it is
blank except for "error". I am assuming because I am on that drive and
have
windows already open and it wants to reformat the drive. I have seen the
hidden file that has the info it is 4.21 GB and it is a WIM file. How can
I
restore without doing so through Windows Advanced Boot Options?

Any help would be much appreciated!

Personally, I'd go to the Dell Support site first, if I really wanted to
reinstall the OEM OS from scratch, and the restore image is intact. After
all, they built the thing to start with. They have tons of articles on how
to restore these.

 

[Guest]

Thanks for the reply, unfortunately they were no help - I tried them first
and figured I'd ask here. I have always gotten the best advice here!

I was told to do a system restore - none saved the original was Vista
I was told to do the F8 option in detail from the tech, when he finished I
replied I don’t have that option. His reply was "I would just follow above
stepsâ€.

Thanks again for the advice.