How to Perform System Restore on a Dell PC

[Apoptosis]

There are times when simply doing a Windows restore isn’t enough; you also may not have been provided with any operating system / restore CD’s or DVD’s for your Dell computer. Luckily for you, Dell places restore materials on a separate partition of your hard drive. If all else fails and your last resort is restoring your computer to “like new”; here are the instructions to do so.

1. Back up all the data you wish to save on a thumb drive, external hard drive, etc. (the point of the restore is to ERASE EVERYTHING!!!) Note: if you are doing this because of a virus, be sure you aren’t going to infect your computer with the same virus by transferring the infected files back to your system after the restore is finished.
2. Make sure everything is unplugged from your computer except your mouse, keyboard, and monitor.
3. When you reboot your system you will see a blue bar flash across the top of the screen as it boots, quickly press CNTRL and F11. Act fast now as if you miss your opportunity you will have to reboot and try again.
4. Click Restore on the screen that appears and accept the warning that pops up.
5. When the restore is finished, a window will appear stating that the system recover process was successful. Click “Finish” to reboot.

[vbironchef]

Why buy a Dell?

[GI-JOE]

Why buy a Dell?

I think he meant when you are fixing the poor sap's(who got suckered into buying one) dell when it dies.

[bubba]

Not all Dells have this feature! To tell if your particular Dell has it, look in the drive manager for a hidden locked partition if its there then you can do the quick restore, if its not, you got to do it the hard way.

If the hard drive has ever been replaced this feature is still in the boot, but the target hidden partition is not. I have yet to find a way to rebuild this on a new drive.