[TriLUG] OT: Dell desktop, recovering boot and partition info

[Jeff Schornick]

On Mon, Aug 31, 2009 at 21:08, Joseph Mack NA3T<jmack at wm7d.net> wrote:
> The whole first partition is 48M. The winxp install comes on a CD and I
> would guess then that it's about 600M, so the 48M can't be the whole
> install.

You're right.  It's actually not a restore partition, but the Dell
Utility Partition...

  http://www.goodells.net/dellutility/index.htm

...which isn't enough (at least on its own) to allow a reinstall.

> Is the 48M partition to boot the machine and pull down the Windows
> install from Dell?

Sounds unlikely -- I've yet to see Windows distributed that way from a
major manufacturer.  It's been a while since I bought a new system,
but my last Thinkpad still used restore CDs which you had to request
from IBM/Lenovo.  I wouldn't be surprised if Dell worked the same way.

Good luck with the rest of your restore.

  - Jeff