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RESET and DELL RECOVERY both BROKEN
I'm trying to factory reset my computer but the link to the recovery partition must have become damaged. When I try to reset using the advance startup menu in windows 8 it asks me to inset my recovery media. When I open dell backup and recovery it displays random codes and is completely unreadable. reinstalling dell backup and recover gives me the error "factorysetup error 5." My Dell wont open. I have verified in the partition manager that my recovery partition is intact, but reagentc lists the link as disabled and i am not able to enable it. Reverting to system restore points seemed to make the dell programs run even more erratically. o\
I want to just order recovery media. My laptop is under warranty. but when i input my service tag it says retail service tag detected and makes me register my laptop only to tell me its already registered and thats it. I hit a wall after that. I live in the US i should be able to order the recovery disks but it may have something to do with ie being preset to chinese and my timezone set to bejing -.- even after selecting english and united states on the windows setup screen.
If someone knows how to reconnect the os to the recovery partition it would really help. I tried for hours googling solutions. That or i need the recovery disks from dell.
Philip_Yip
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September 28th, 2014 06:00
Factory Error 5 has not been resolved and is currently being worked on.
You will need to call Dell US Technical Support to request a Reinstallation DVD.
richarrrd
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September 28th, 2014 23:00
I found a solution!
At least to my particular case. But I'll start by warning anyone reading that I fooled around with these settings knowing full-well that I could brick my system, and if that's not worth it to you I wouldn't try this.
I'll start with how I got into this situation. I used the 'reset' option in the advanced startup menu while running Windows 8.1. Through my experiences of factory resetting this computer multiple times I would recommend using Dell Backup and Recovery as 'reset' seems to unveil otherwise hidden partitions and seems a little quirky.
After the reset, I uninstalled a lot of preloaded programs like My Dell and Dell Backup and Recovery because I was sick of them randomly starting up and minimizing Mortal Kombat while I was facing Shao Kahn. However, later, I decided I wanted to factory reset again because Windows seemed to be really choppy this time around and every once in a while I'd lose responsiveness of my touchpad and the charm menu wouldn't show up (start menu was completely inaccessible.) Upon trying to reinstall Dell Backup and Recovery I was greeted with the 'factorysetup error 5' message window I described in my above post.
I messed around with PowerShell for quite a while trying to figure out what was wrong. I found that the recovery partition (PBR Image on my computer) was completely intact. Googling my problem came up with lots of references to reagentc commands but I couldn't quite figure out how to use it. I tried restoring my computer to before I uninstalled all the preloaded software but that made everything much worse. I couldn't reinstall windows because loading a retail disc would prompt me that my key was invalid for that type of installation. In short the only thing I could do was order the recovery media or use the broken recovery partition.
After messing around with a file named ReAgent.xml in the System32 folder unsuccessfully I decided to upgrade to Windows 8.1 to see if the new Windows installation would somehow redetect my recovery partition. (Installing Windows 8.1 is an odd way of fixing something). After the upgrade reagentc showed the link was enabled again and I was able to reinstall Dell Backup and Recovery which found my recovery partition. I wish I could show you how my ReAgent.xml file looked before I upgraded but it mysteriously vanished from the windows.old folder. Im not sure if that file was even read in the installation. Another interesting note is before the upgrade I had used diskpart in Powershell to assign every single partition a letter (to snoop through them) and left the letters on because I'm lazy.
Here was the information printed from PowerShell after it fixed itself. I typed "reagentc /info" (I wrote it down not copied and pasted so it looked a little different.)
\\?\GLOBALROOT\device\harddisk0\partition6\Recovery\WindowsRE
BCD = bc762641-4705-11e4-be71-8056f23b7934
image location = null
image index = 0
cimage location = null
cimage location = 0
With the information I gathered from Google and looking at the path after the link was fixed it's possible that using the command
reagentc /setosimage \path //?/GLOBALROOT\device\harddisk0\partition6\Recovery\WindowsRE /index 0
(Try with and without the /index 0 part)
in a administrative PowerShell may just fix the problem. If it still can't find the recovery partition you could also try assigning a drive letter to partition6 and replacing the GLOBALROOT mumbojumbo with the assigned drive letter.
I didn't try this myself because now that it's fixed I don't want to mess with it anymore.
I hope all this garabe I wrote helps someone out there, or if DELL truly is working on a solution, helps the codemonkeys figure out what the hell is going on. I was so frustrated I wanted to fold my laptop in half (the other way.) I have a
Inspiron 15 3521
fyi