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Dell Laptop System Restore

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by old guy 1 view

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A friend wants to do a System Restore from the Dell CD. He has installed SP2. Does he need to uninstall SP2 so he can restore WinXP?

Thanks,

6 replies

by tig2

It should only require that he feed the disk to the Dell and let her go.

Of course, if he wants a "clean" install, he should follow standard protocol.

Before he toasts the system, drop SP2 on a disk- assuming he captured the exe.

Goes without saying that he should check the system for the exe of any programs he has installed for which he does not have the original media (Firefox, Crap Cleaner, Zone- all of which he would not likely have original disks for).

Hope this helps!

by old guy

Thanks for the info. Actually since I was not really targeting on what he was doing I realized he was trying to run the disk in Windows and not from boot up. I'm going to tell him to have the disk in and turn the machine on. He does want to reformat the disk. I've already had him back everything up and make sure he has all his software available.

Thanks,

by tig2

If it is a D600, he will want to check his BIOS rev too. They had a heck of a time stabilising this POS. I can say this with certainty- I own one. the Dell website can tell him if he needs to update his BIOS- the current rev should show on his splash screen.

If he is going for a format/repartition, he will want to be very certain that Dell doesn't have restore files living in one of the current partitions. If he finds anything like this, it should be burned to disk. Not something that the average user considers.

Good luck!

by old guy

about that. Good call. I'm not really sure what he has. It's one of those by the way questions and I haven't really sat down with him and his laptop to really look at it. I'll have to stop him and give him a block of time to help him. Thanks again to both of you.

by tig2

WE are always willing to help... depending on which one of us has control of the brain cell, that is!

by sharma.knl1

Please do not uninstall Windows because it can be marely done without doing that. All that you need to do is to restart your laptop and press F8 when you see Dell logo and then select System Restore from the dailogue box that opens. Else, you can change boot sequence to CD/DVD drive and then enter Drivers bootable CD and then it will automatically give you options for the same.....

Thx & Regards,

Kunal Sharma

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