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General discussion

Dell E1505 registry files missing and can't be booted

Aug 16, 2009 3:49AM PDT

Hi

I have a dell E 1505 that's a couple of years old.
The original system CD disk has been lost.
I'd like to reformat, repartition and reinstall WinXP or Vista & the model specific drivers.

Or even replace my current HD with a new, blank HD.
I have a generic CD for the XP OS.
How can I find out which model specific drivers I need and download them?

I have a service tag but the dell website still lists loads of things I don't need, so doesn't seem that aware of the details of my system.

I know there is a small partition on the hard disk that seems to be dell specific.
Do I need to keep this partition? Why is it there? What software is kept there and why does it need to be on its own partition?

Discussion is locked

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Hi, Broncobrian:
Aug 23, 2009 10:34AM PDT
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dell partitions
Aug 30, 2009 1:52PM PDT

If the recovery doesn't work, the partition may be the laptop diagnostics partition. My E1505 had 2 Dell partitions when it was new. The dignostics is really small.

I've successfully reinstalled Vista recently and only had to reinstall the synaptics driver, the rest of the drivers worked off the microsoft site, microsoft even had a newer driver for the ATI Radeon 1400.

My site for the tag number had many drivers that I don't have also. I think it covers all the similiar models. I just used the ones that applied to my hardware.

johnn1949

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see my post
Aug 30, 2009 1:55PM PDT

I clicked the wrong reply