Dude, I got shafted fixing a Dell

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enlightenedby42

Supreme [H]ardness
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Jan 19, 2005
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Alright, so I got shafted into trying to fix this Dell Dimension E310 and am thinking, as I'm sure some of you have in situations like this, "What the HELL did they do to this thing?"

It has GoBack installed, and not only will it not boot into windows stabily past the logon screen, but it won't finish loading any of the restore points that are on there without crashing.

Its looking sort of like it could be a hardware problem, but I'd like to try a clean windows install before I start ripping it to bits, and herein lies the question.

Don't all Dells have a small partition that will restore to factory defaults? How the heck do you use it?

And would it KILL people to ship goddamn windows or image discs?? (that one was rhetorical..lol)

Thanks in advance. I'm pretty good at doing stuff like this, but budget OEM rigs piss me off big time.
 
Yea the dell should have a recovery partition but call dell and have them send you the disks. Besides if it comes down to a format you can set it up right without all the extra crap dell loads.
 
I would also recommend just doing a fresh Windows install, since then you get no Dell bloatware. Though if you want to use the restore partition (assuming the machine was shipped after the middle of 2004, that's when the restore partition was implemented, and the previous user did not remove the restore partition), this is what you do:

Backup any and all data.

Turn off and restart the machine, when you see the Dell splash screen, hit CTRL-F11 and that will throw you into the restore utility. Make sure you hook up a PS/2 mouse, USB mice won't work.

If that doesn't work, or if you don't see the small blue bar at the top of the screen with DELL on it (when you restart) you need to use the program DSRFIX (google it) that will fix the MBR so you can boot off the restore partition.
 
theelectic said:
Turn off and restart the machine, when you see the Dell splash screen, hit CTRL-F11 and that will throw you into the restore utility. Make sure you hook up a PS/2 mouse, USB mice won't work.

If that doesn't work, or if you don't see the small blue bar at the top of the screen with DELL on it (when you restart) you need to use the program DSRFIX (google it) that will fix the MBR so you can boot off the restore partition.
Click to expand...
Ok, I think this might be my problem. This machine is from about Christmas of '05, and it has NO PS/2 (or serial or parallel or 1394) ports. USB mice and keyboards only, which is a real pain.

I guess maybe I'll just have to call them and get the stupid disc. I always prefer doing a clean install, but the thing about it is I know these people are just going to go right back to browsing sketchy web pages and screwing stuff up anyway, so fine tuning won't make too much of a difference anyway.

Thanks guys.
 
If the comptuer has no PS/2 ports, then I have to assume that the restore partition will work with a USB device, or at worst keyboard. I know I couldn't get it to work with my 8400 unless I plugged in a PS/2 mouse.

Anyway, I would give the restore partition a go anyway, as it'll save you time and hassle waiting for a replacement DVD. Worse comes to worse, it won't work. More info:

http://www.goodells.net/dellrestore/fixes.htm
http://support.dell.com/support/top...d=1109F6A96D4811DB9D0A359A1778ACFD&l=en&s=dhs
 
"Dell" rhymes with "Hell" for a reason, you know.

I want to find the person who designed the cooler setup for the 600m, and shove it up his nose.
 
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