trying to fix Repair Your Computer option in Dell Inspiron N5110 (corr

Hi,

I have a new Dell Inspiron N5110 laptop with Windows 7 that works fine. I made System restore discs using Dell datasafe local backup and I wanted to check out how could I restore them.
As per the manual, I pressed F8 while booting the system and came into some advanced boot options menu. I selected Repair your Computer option and got a message that said "Windows failed to start. blah...blah... The boot selection failed because a required device is inaccessible"
I checked various posts and confirmed with bcdedit that my bcd settings were absolutely fine. I assigned a drive letter to the recovery partition to check the files pointed to by the recovery section in the bcd. I found that the winre.wim file referenced in \Recovery\WindowsRE\winre.wim was 0 byte in size. While all the files seemed to date to the laptop purchase date, only this file in the entire recovery partition had a recent date and coincidentally that date/time coincided with my first Windows Update !
Anyways, now I want to get that Repair your computer option working back. Is there any way to get the winre.wim file from another N5110 or from the Dell Win7 DVD ?

Of course if you have access to another N5110 and you indeed find that it has a correct winRE.wim file you can copy that file to your recovery partition and try.

But..... why don't you contact Dell India Support and put the problem to them given that your new laptop should still be under warranty and free technical support.

From my experience their Customer Service has been good and prompt and never evasive and derelict. They should be able to guide you correctly and properly to resolve your issue. I would rather advise that you take recourse to it.

The .wim is likely there in its partition but hidden. Unhide it at Control Panel>Folder Options>View, or Explore using free Partition Wizard bootable CD.

We have experts here who can help you mount and run the .wim but the problem is that it will not necessarily repair the lost hotlink on F8 to WinRE and Factory Recovery. Only running the Factory REcovery Disks will do this. Can you still make those disks?

Another option to consider is using the WIn7 installation DVD to Clean Reinstall Windows 7 Factory OEM
deleting all partitions during install. THis will reinstall F8 tools AND give a much superior install absent the OEM bloatware and useless factory utilities which have much better versions built into Win7.

Some other resources to also consider: Dell Recovery Partition - restoring F8 link
Dell Restoring Your Computer´s Software to the Factory Settings

sanjayawat said:

......Any chance you've been to a dell service centre which re-imaged the hard disk for you ?
I bet they should have some software which would re-image the harddisk to factory image.

Nope.

Me too wanted the Recovery disks for my laptop ( In my case the factory image was not to be seen anywhere in the recovery partition which I came to know almost a year later - I still have the first day image of all the partitions), but they sent me the OEM Reinstall disk. All the more better. I wiped my hard disk clean, annexed the useless 14GB Recovery partition and OEM partition and did a clean install, retaining the OEM activation.

For all my computers, I do not depend upon the pesky recovery/repair options. I always image my systems periodically and restore if needed.(And yep, whenever I take an image, I restore my system immediately with that image and confirm that it works.) Way to go.:)

gregrocker said:

The .wim is likely there in its partition but hidden. Unhide it at Control Panel>Folder Options>View, or Explore using free Partition Wizard bootable CD.

I tried that and it showed that the file exists, but its size is 0 bytes. I had seen some articles on how to restore winre.wim, but it would have restored the MS version of recovery menu. I got winre.wim from someone who had the same model as mine, and it restored the recovery menu with Dell's options added to the menu.

Strangely, when the problem existed, I had created Windows System Repair Disc and also Dell DataSafe's recovery disc(which is to be used if F8 fails). In both these discs, I got the same "Windows failed to start. blah...blah... The boot selection failed because a required device is inaccessible" message when i booted from DVD. I guess that both these discs used the faulty 0 byte winre.wim to build there boot menus.

Next time I'm stuck and F8 doesnt work, I'll reinstall the OS. that seems to be a better option.

jumanji said:

For all my computers, I do not depend upon the pesky recovery/repair options. I always image my systems periodically and restore if needed.(And yep, whenever I take an image, I restore my system immediately with that image and confirm that it works.) Way to go.:)

I'm new to Win7. Before that I've used XP extensively and re-installed it many times as I had backup of all my data files on an external HDD. With this new recovery feature in Win7, I thought I would be saved of the re-installs. I understand how to take image and restore it. But isn't that exactly similar to the F8 - Repair your Computer menu in Win7 ? There is a program which has taken image of the C drive and instead of the recovery program being run from DVD drive, its run from the recovery partition and it simply restores the C drive with the image file. How is the image/restore option better than recovery/repair option ?

Because you are reimaging your own personalized setup, ideally from a point where it was running best. Backup Complete Computer - Create an Image Backup

You're also storing image on an external HD so it is available if the HD dies, which is smarter.

Finally your image can be that of the superior Clean Reinstall Windows 7 Factory OEM without the bloatware and useless utilties which have better versions built into Win7, but which are in the factory Recovery image. If not, you may have done the next best thing before imaging which is to Clean up factory bloatware.

hi sanjay
actually i have the same problem that you had. could you upload the winre.wim file. I have the same model as yours

thanks

panks 18 said:

hi sanjay
actually i have the same problem that you had. could you upload the winre.wim file. I have the same model as yours

thanks

Sure I can do that, but I had a 64bit OS and your title says that you've a 32bit OS. I don't think that winre.wim being a boot loader kind of component of the OS would be common for 32 and 64 bit OSes. Do you still want me to upload it ?