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#1
Dell factory recovery BSOD
I'm working on a Dell Inspiron 1545. The install of Windows 7 Home Premium was extremely damaged, couldn't run most programs, couldn't get Properties on anything, couldn't change desktop settings to put Computer and other icons on it. Could not uninstall or install anything. Pretty much the only thing possible was copying the owner's Documents folder to a USB drive. Nothing in any of the DELL folders would run, so if there was anything to create a restore disc set, it was not possible to do so.
Very. Thoroughly. Hosed. Owner installed several well known "fix" programs that are anything but. Dunno how it managed to boot or do anything at all.
So I hit F8, went to the recovery, used Dell's factory restore - selected the options to *keep nothing*. It goes through the motions, restarts and it reboots partway through the startup animation. Second boot it makes it through the animation then flashes a blue screen and reboots.
So I go back with F8 and disable automatic reboot so I can snap a pic of the BSOD with my phone. Here's the full stop error
stop: 0x0000007b (0xfffff880009a98e8, 0xffffffffc000000d, 0x0000000000000000, 0x0000000000000000)
Next step was connecting the drive to another computer to delete the OS partition then redo the factory recovery. Nope! Exact same STOP error.
Can't get any logs because it doesn't boot yet. It has to boot to finish setting up Windows and installing the factory loadout of drivers etc.
I know the BCDedit and other tools are on the recovery partition. Ease US shows it all with the drive connected to another computer, but so far every how-to I've tried that involves looking at the recovery partition with a command prompt - all the files and folders needed to try to fix it remain hidden.
Is there a bootable ISO I can download, with BCD fixing software ready to go? What would be real nice is if Dell would release a bootable image file to repair their broken recovery system, or if the recovery was setup to "brute force" reset *everything* to exactly how it needs to be to work.