Dell Backup Recovery Utility Absent?!

Here's a link to their instructions for creating a backup using the "Backup and Recovery Manager"..

http://www.support.dell.com/support/topics/global.aspx/support/dsn/en/document?c=us&docid=370461&l=en&s=gen

And as just an example, here's one of the user guides:

http://support.dell.com/support/edocs/SOFTWARE/DBRM/UG/DBRM_UGV1_0.pdf

Hope this helps.

Grif

Hi
I am new to this forum and I found many interesting things.Please kep on posting such things.Thank you

You have found "online" some XP version and now use it. That's goes against the EULA of MS and Dell's as well. Regardless, this maybe the crux of your problem or compounding it. When you brought the Dell system all was included, maybe not the OS on discs, but the "recovery" via the HD on hidden or partition of HD. If you follow the recovery process for your Dell model# and it should have the utilities installed, if you don't find them them the install was incomplete for Dell purposes. Since, you mention no recovery disc to include the drivers, etc., then you have if anything a big hassle to restore the system to Dell pre-installed on day-1. Dell, does offer support at least the drivers to d/l, also if they have them available in stock will sell the required recovery/restore discs for your model# for small cost. If not, I suggest http://www.restoredisks.com as an alternative besides the eBay route.

As for "system back-ups", its best to buy the "ghost" s/w and be done with it. The products are very reliable and do recover well when the need arises. There maybe shareware or similar freebies, but they usually more user involved to deal with or test/demo versions. But check Dell for the ulitity alone if available, surf for it at Dell support.

tada -----Willy

Many of the Dell PCs have total System Recovery partition on your main hard drive. It is basically a "hidden" area of the hard drive. You access it by pressing CTRL+F11 during the boot stage.

You will know that you have such a System Recovery area if you see a blue line during bootup, on the top of the otherwise black screen, and the text in that line says "www.dell.com"
You have to press that CTRL+F11 during that blue line time.

Now, occasionally some issues will screw up the bootup and you no longer see that blue line of text. If you have seen it, and now you never do, there is a Dell boot restore utility to re-write the bootup sectors of the harddrive. There is no guarantee that you can get the blue line to come back, but I have done it twice now, and it worked.

You do need that blue line time to access the utility to access to restore the full system to what it looked like when the computer was fresh from the factory.

That System Restore will wipe out all of your files, so only attempt it with the knowledge that once you start it you will have nothing of yours left. So, if there is something on the drive that you want, be sure to copy your desired files, folders, and bookmarks off to another drive first!

Try online ftorages for recovery such as dropbox: http://www.dropbox.com or amazon s3