Windows 7: Restoring Vista to a Windows 7 laptop

Hello,

I'm trying to restore my Dell Inspiron 1750 to its factory condition. I installed Windows 7 awhile back but am giving the laptop to my mom and want to restore the factory settings.
My recovery, E drive is still intact with the factory.wim file.
Dell tech support told me to eff off so I turned to the internet.
I found another thread on this from the dell support forums,
Problems with Factory Image Restore on Dell Inspiron 1750 - Microsoft OS Forum - Software & Operating Systems - Dell Community
but I couldn't follow the command prompt portion.
Thanks for any help you can give me.

That should work, but you may find there is an easier way.

Best to have some kind of bootable disk to hand - just in case ( I assume you have the Windows 7 install dvd ).

1. boot into windows 7

2. look in disk management and check the dell recovery partition is a Primary partition ( dark blue )

3. Assuming it is, then rt click it and mark it Active.

4. Reboot pc - you should boot straight into Dell recovery/restore program.

I wasn't able to understand anything past this: "If you have installed Vista on the C:\ drive, then you can simply boot up your system. Locate the file name factory.wim on the Factory Image partition. Make a note of the drive letter and path to that file."

on that link I posted.



I don't have a windows 7 disk handy any longer but I'm sure I could create a bootable USB.

You probably won't need it just now - but always handy to have - d/l one from here:

Windows 7 Recovery Disc

You should only need to do steps 1 to 4 in my post above - no dvd needed for that.

Giving it a shot now, I'll post the results in a second.

BOOTMGR is missing

I assume this means that the recovery partition doesn't work or was corrupted?
I'll bet I need that recovery disk now, haha.

Here is the Dell procedure for reinstallation: Restoring Your Computer´s Software to the Factory Settings | Dell

Yes, you do need the recovery disc - is there a boot.wim on the recovery partition?

You also need this:

DISMGUIx86x64.zip

and This:

GIMAGEX-X86-X64.zip

D/L the recovery disc iso - extract it to your HD with e.g. 7-zip.

run dismgui - browse to extracted iso\sources\boot.wim and mount it in any EMPTY folder

copy the correct bit version of Gimagex into mount folder\windows\system32

Click Unmount - com.

Put it on a flash drive - boot it up, after it finds window installation - click on it to highlight it and select NEXT - select command prompt - type GIMAGEX, then press enter.

Click the Apply tab - then for the source browse to the dell install.wim

for the destination - browse to your windows partition ( don't worry about drive letters -they are different seen from the boot media ).

Apply the image. Should only take a few minutes.

I just loaded a fresh copy of windows 7 on to the laptop. I had to relabel the recovery partition but it still is intact.
There is no boot.wim file on the recovery drive.

what if i can find a download for windows vista. Would loading that back on to the computer temporarily allow me to extract the factory.wim file?