Vista - restore to factory settings

ok im tryimg to restore my dell inspiron 1525 laptop to factory settings.(also i run vista home premium 32bit). I have tried the f8 advancted options and people say i should see a command to restore to factory settings but it dosent show up for me. can anyone help me out

Hi ZAPP,

Backup any data you need to keep first.

Here are the instructions :

Dell - Support

If they don't work for you, you have two options:

1. Boot the Dell dvd and reinstall using that ( if you have one)

Or

2. Mark the Recovery partition active ( sometimes called Flagged On ) and restart. The recovery program should start .

To Flag On the recovery partition , you would use a bootable partition manager, GParted is a free one here:

http://sourceforge.net/project/showf...ease_id=683279

SourceForge.net: GParted: Files

It downloads as an .iso file.

Burn that .iso to a cd - do not format the cd.

Use this .iso burner :

Burn CDCC.zip

Boot the cd you just made -it will load into memory and show your Hard drive.

Rt click the recovery partition ( it will smallish 6-10GB) and select Flag On , then click Apply.

The recovery partition should now say "boot" next to it.

Remove the cd and restart the pc.

when you press f8, select Repair Your Computer and press enter.
after entering username and pswd, you will enter Windows recovery environment and select Dell factory image restore option.

thanks siw2 i found my operations disk and got my computer back to what it was but now i have another problem. my computer will not let me get on the internet and some of my drivers have a yellow ! by them but it will not let me reinstall them or anything.

Using another computer, go to Dell - Drivers and Downloads and enter your service tag number to access the drivers for your system.

Download them to a CD/DVD (or a flash drive), then put that in your computer and install them. If any yellow !'s or red x's remain, let us know what they are and we'll try to come up with drivers for them.

Hi zapp,

How do you mean it won't let you install them?

Do you have the driver installers on a cd ?

thanks for all yalls help i got my computer running perfect again

Hi ZAPP,

Glad it's working for you now.