As many people here, I'm having trouble restoring my laptop to the original settings. I have a Latitude D630 with 2GB RAM. Originally it came with Windows Vista Ultimate 32-bits English, but recently I decided to try Windows 7 Ultimate 64-bit, so I did a clean install removing the previous installation of Vista (C drive).
However, as far as I remember, the RECOVERY partition (E drive) remained untouched. And I don't remember having touched it, knowing it was the only thing Dell provided to restore my laptop in times of troubles. Now, after a while, my laptop has been crashing and getting so slow that I decided to downgrade it to the original version and reinstall the applications, 'cuz I didn't have problems with Vista. I started looking for the way to restore the original OS, since my laptop didn't come with any CD/DVDs, only with the famous partition.
I've found many posts, official websites, etc on how to reach the restore menu from the Boot menu by pressing F8, etc. But after doing it and logging with my user (included in the Administrator User Group), I didn't get the option at the end of the menu to restore using the Dell factory settings. That made sense to me since the menu is part of the Windows 7 OS Recovery utilities (which I didn't get by means of Dell), so I decided to download Dell's Backup and Recovery Manager hoping it would recognize the partition, but unfortunately I got an error ( You have not created a backup. Dell recommends you create at least one backup to use to recover your system, if needed.) and no matter how many options I looked at, the app wasn't able to find any backup. Then I went to look at the partition itself to see if I could find any.exe that'd help itself get restored, but unfortunately got no success either.
However, I noted that out of the 2GB assigned to the partition, only 633MB are actually used. The following are the folders and files contained dell Program Files Program Data (hidden) sources Tools Users Windows Boot.BAK I also found that the dell folder is empty. Does anyone know if I can still use that partition to restore my system or do I have to get a DVD and do it the old way? Hi NelsonAponte, Since the system is running slow, I will recommend you to run the diagnostics on your system to check the hardware functionality:.
Dell Latitude D630 Xp Windows Driver Recovery Cd Restore Disk
Restart your system and keep tapping 'F12' as soon as the Dell logo appears. Highlight 'Diagnostics' using down arrow key and press enter.
The diagnostics should begin. The color bars may display. Press 'Y' when you see the color bars. Please let me know if you get any error code; I will need the exact error code/error message. Usually the recovery partition is inaccessible if the windows partition has been deleted, however, you can also try and initiate 'PC restore.exe' within the operating system.