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June 4th, 2012 05:00
Dell DataSafe Local Restore Cannot find Factory Image
Hi
A am trying to restore a Dell Inspiron 1018 with its Windows 7 starter Factory Image. The DataSafe utility does not appear to be finding the Factory.wim file or its ini files. I have verified the Factory.wim is in its original location.
Can anyone suggest how I get DataSafe to start so that it sees the WIM files? I wonder if I can modify its configuration files to point to the current location of the Factory.wim? Or lastly could this be down to the MBR, if so where do I get Dells MBR from?
Procedure Attempted:
I booted the machine and run the DataSafe utility. I selected in the window System Recovery Options: Dall DataSafe Restore and Emergency Backup. In the Welcome screen 'Restore Computer...' does not find backup, so I selected 'Select other System...'. In the next screen I selected 'Restore my Computer'. I now get a list of backups which only contains 'Factory Image'. Selecting it and pressing Next produces the message 'The backup is corrupt or missing. Please try'.
Booting off another operating system and inspecting the Dell Recovery partition shows what I would expect. There is a dell/image/Factory.wim and preload/BASE.WIM. The dell/DBRM.ini file contains 1 [Backups] This is the Dell Factory Image. Its pointed to in the C:\ drive. The DataSafe restore appears to be running off the C: drive as when I clicked 'Browse for more System Backups' I could see the C:\ drive and in it is the dell and preload folder. In this DataSafe option, I could browse into dell/image, but it didn't show the Factory.wim; I assume because it is not a backup.
The history is that I installed the GRUB boot loader on the machine. I have to assume this is not booting to the Rescue Partition is a manner which was anticipated by the Dell DataSafe team.
I've backed up everything I want from the machine, including the files from the Restore partition.
Many thanks
Toby
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ejn63
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June 4th, 2012 05:00
You will need to boot the system from a Windows disc:
smsoftdev-solutions.blogspot.com/.../how-to-restore-dell-factory-image-when.html
tobychaloner
6 Posts
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June 5th, 2012 03:00
Thanks, I got to the point of trying to obtain imagex or ximage, unfortunately I'm all linux at the moment and cannot get imagex because I cannot authenticate with Microsoft - catch 22.
Is there a MBR from DELL you could post please? A hex dump would be sufficient.
speedstep
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June 5th, 2012 08:00
The Dell Datasafe Partition is an ENCRYPTED NTFS partition. There is no factory.WIM file on an unencrypted partition anymore.
In the old days you could use norton Ghost and clone the drive and it would get everything.
NOW if you reformat or change or modify the partition you BREAK the encryption and can never ever again recover.
If you had purchased a 16 gig or larger USB Flash drive and made a Dell Datasafe Full backup it would have made a bootable NTFS formatted
USB Flash drive that could recover everything. If you ignored the Prompts and re did the drive in linux then you are totally hozed fer shure.
tobychaloner
6 Posts
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June 5th, 2012 12:00
That makes sense.
When I received the machine it had 3 partitions. And encrypted one, a small one with Factory.WIM etc and a third with Windows 7 on it. I left the first 2 unchanged and merely lost the Windows 7 partition. I also over wrote the MBR naively thinking that since grub will pass the boot onto it, that it would restore ok. I've set the encrypted partition as the first boot partition, but the boot jumps to the second and boots there. Not sure whether the decrypt for the first is in the MBR or in the second partition. When I boot the partition with Factory.wim, the restoration applications are all running nicely, except they cannot see the Factory.wim file. I am assuming that they are attempting to look up the file using some indirect which booting off DELLs MBR provides. Do you think there is much mileage in chasing the MBR as a possible fix?
tobychaloner
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June 7th, 2012 11:00
Don't worry about the MBR, I've got a copy of WAIM and think I can get imagex from it.
tobychaloner
6 Posts
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June 11th, 2012 13:00
Further question:
I've discovered that the DELL WIM files have their file attributes System and Hidden bits set. Can anyone shed any light on this?
tobychaloner
6 Posts
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June 19th, 2012 13:00
I managed to get Windows AIK downloaded for Windows 7 and get imagex to restore the DELL image. All ok. Many thanks.