New Dell XPS 8700 Win7 Pro 64 (OEM Recovery Media Not Valid?)

Hi
I purchased a new in box Dell XPS 8700 PC from Amazon a few months ago, reason being it was a factory Win7 ( Up gradable to 8.1). My last PC died and I wanted to stay with 7 as long as possible.

This came in the dell factory sealed box with the Dell Operating System Recovery Media for 8,1 ( but actuially has Win7 Pro on it also.)

When I first got the PC I did use the recovery disk and it worked fine. Again this disc is a Dell Disc and came sealed in the Dell packaging.

Today I installed a new HP printer and for some reason I received a error that the PC was unable to start with one of the notations that i may have been caused by new hardware. So I unplugged the USB cable from the printer and attempted to restart the PC.

Same issue so I restarted using the F12 key and then choose to boot from the Dell disc, then went to the repair section and clicked on fix the start up issue. The disc ran and then it asked to insert the Win7 media to continue .

Since the OEM disc was already in the dvd drive I ejected it and reinserted it , disc ran and then I got a message that the disc was not valid.... Not Valid ? What the heck its a Dell sealed disc that I had ran before and worked as it should.

My next step was to use my dell recovery disc that I burned as soon as I bought the PC.
Restart>F12>Boot from Dvd drive to recovery disc. Was able to run the fix start up issue and restart.

So I restarted and tried that same disc again and basically got the same issue disc not vaild?

Any ideas?

Also prior to doing any of this I have Acronis True image 2020 and did make a system back up last week. Anyone think I should try doing a system restore off of that or should I just leave well enough alone?

Did run a SFC/Scannow and that passed as well as running the chkdisc /r /f /x and ran that, I was not at the PC when that was over but I suspect that there were no errors as there was nothing on the screen....

As you know Win7 is no longer supported so Dell or MS will be of any use, perhaps somebody here could explain what is going on???

hi jjr

Im not exactly sure what your asking

Did you buy a new comp or just an W7 OS disc for the comp your running

Roy


i'll be around for about for an hour

Roy
I bought a brand new Dell XPS 8700 pc that came in a factory sealed box and in the box came new sealed Dell reinstsllation dvd.

So it was all brand new.

SIW2 said:

You were able to use F12 to boot from disc1
Then after ejecting and trying to boot disc1 again with F12 you got "not valid"


You were able to use F12 to boot from disc2.
Then after ejecting and trying to boot disc2 again with F12 you got "not valid"

Sounds like something to do with the dvd drive

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
OK
So to make it clear I can boot using F12 using my OEM Dell Disc or my Recovery Media {repair disc) I made. Using my E: or F: dvd drives.

When using the OEM disc when I choose to run the start up repair it starts running and then I get
"insert your Windows Installation Disc or recovery media to continue" Note my OEM Dell disc is already in the drive.

Now if I eject the disc and re-insert it I get:
"The media you inserted is not valid"

So next step is do a restart using the F12 with the repair media I created when I got the pc and run the startup repair.

Startup repair runs as it should but I get:
"Startup repair could not find a problem"

Next if I go to the view diag and repair details I get:
"The OS system version is incompatible with Startup Repair"

At this point I getting really confused?

Should I use the OEM disc and set back to the original settings that I would have to back up my files as IO would loose those?

Run my Acronis 2020 image back up I ran last week and then again try the OEM disc and see if that would run the startup repair?

As of now the PS seems tp have no issues starting, (question if there is no startup issue) what kind of message should I recieve from the OEM disc?)

See attached pix

Hi JJR,

The error message is rather revealing - The media you inserted is not valid

Usually implies its the wrong OS format, x86 not x64 or vise versa

follow this link to get either Dell Official iso.
Dell Windows 7 Reinstallation .iso - Windows ISO Downloader - WinCert.net Forums


Then perform a repair install, no loss of data.



Roy

This media is valid and as mentioned worked just fine before, hence still at a loss. This started with the installating of a new printer.

BUT I did make a Dell backup and recovery backup on a spare HD (which I totally forgot about about), popped that back in and ran that and it repaired what ever was wrong and everything passed.

Next I will try running the factory OEM disc again that CAME with the PC from the factory.

Ok
So now reran the OEM Disc from dell booting from F12 , this time I did not get the Not Vaild Error message but did get:

"startup repair couldn't repair your PC"
also showing this underneath:
"E:windows\system32\Logfiles\Srt\SrtTrail.txt"

I did look the above up and it has something to do with Win 10 which Iam not running.

So a at this point according to the Dell Backup and Recovery program that I ran from the HD I had it backed up on all is well and has passed everything.

At this point I believe I'm back up and running and still do not understand what was going on with the OEM disc that worked and then did not. Perhaps it has something to do with no more Win7 support???

Just lucky I had the repair saved to a hard drive and at least that worked as it should.

Thanks all for the tips