No FACTORY IMAGE RESTORE choice! ?

[celamb89]

I'm having the same problem although I am able to boot windows 7 but want to reset to factory settings...
From the command line I can see the factory.wim but when I want to apply it via imagex it tells me imagex is not recognized

Any ideas on how to get imagex in the partition? (there is no tools directory)

 

[SIW2]

Do you have a copy of imagex.exe?

Where did you put it?

 

[celamb89]

Do you have a copy of imagex.exe?

Where did you put it?

No copy and no idea where it is ¿? It's an alienwareand I have previously used alienrespawn but after I removed my Linux partition it started to fail, I want to restore it to factory settings.

I'm thinking on booting hirens mini xp and using gimagexalso from hirens.

 

[mjf]

You could give that a go.
But with Hirens have you tried the MBR bypass and boot directly into the recovery partition. These options are at the end of the Hirens menu.

 

[celamb89]

You could give that a go.
But with Hirens have you tried the MBR bypass and boot directly into the recovery partition. These options are at the end of the Hirens menu.

That's a good plan, I'll give it a try tonight after work

 

[celamb89]

Success

So got in to a fight last night with the computer... For some reason when I made the partition the primary active it couldnt boot...

I was able to reset to factory settings by doing the following:

1. Booting Hirens Boot CD
2. entering Mini XP mode
3. Formatting the OS partition
4. Opening the GImagex program from Hirens
5. At GImagex used the apply section to expand the Factory.wim, check the date on the file to know if its the original(if you're doing this I would recommend checking you can see the Factory.wim file
6. before formatting the OS, my path was d:\dell\images\Factory.wim)
   wait and enjoy a clean install with drivers already installed... took about 15minutes to expand (GImagex) and 30 to format

 

[celamb89]

BTW the dell folder in the recovery partition was hidden and all do I changed the properties to the folder and subfolders it would do nothing... I could see the file from the command prompt and with hirens

 

[Thomask]

Celam, could you kind of walk me through how exactly you did it your way? Sorry having some trouble following along. Thanks. I'm in the same boat.

 

[celamb89]

Celam, could you kind of walk me through how exactly you did it your way? Sorry having some trouble following along. Thanks. I'm in the same boat.

What step did you get to? You'll the hirens boot cd or USB to boot to the win XP

 

[Thomask]

Ok so I formatted my C drive. That is what partition is refuting to. Then I went to Gimagex. In apply tab I put my factory.wim as source and my C drive as destination. Clicked apply and worked fine. Not quite sure what you mean by formatting it again for "30 min". Lol restoring is such a burden under the wrong circumstances.

 

[Thomask]

The boot cd. To answer your other question

 

[SIW2]

Which boot cd do you have with gimagex on it, was it Hiren's you used ?

Is your os booting up fine now?

 

[Thomask]

Correct. It actually seemed to work once I did it the second time. The only problem is it won't boot because of a missing ntdl etc. but in the hiren menu option there is a boot you can do off of the hard drive for vista/7. That brought me to the desktop. Everything seems in shape. It just can't boot on its own without hirens boot disk. If that makes any sense...lol

 

[Thomask]

I've had major trouble with this computer by the way. The day I got it I accidentally through a uninstall.exe file into the C drive and ran it (ya I know. I didn't know that kind of stupidity existed either) and I'm sure you understand how that screwed everything up. An back then I wasn't that knowledgable to just to a factory reset. No I tried to reinstall all the drivers myself. Lol

 

[Thomask]

Alright! Fixed it. After being able to get to the desktop I was able to make a repair disk and used that to fix the boot problem. It's all good now. Man that was a nightmare thanks guys. Haha

 

[celamb89]

Glad you got it! Sorry for the misunderstaing it wasnt formatting again... I just wanted to sate how long it took, I.e. 15m to expand the image and 30 to format

 

[SIW2]

I think by "format" you mean complete the installation?

 

[jcad]

Hi George Crothers and SIM2,

You solutions have been very helpful, thank you very much !!
After performing George's method, I reached another difficulty.

After the final reboot, I got the following message:
NTLDR is missing
Press CTRL+ALT+DEL to restart.

It turns out to be a known issue, WindowsXP updates the Master Boot Record (MBR), which causes the system not to recognize the Win7/Vista OS partition (that was restored).
I can only guess this MBR update was done by the "Mini XP" in Hiren's BootCD.

The solution is to perform a "Startup Repair" from the Windows Install DVD,
which will repair the MBR, and then it's done.

If you don't have the Windows Install DVD, it's advised to create a Windows Repair DVD (or download, if you can find it) before starting the entire process.
See below link for details,it's for Vista/7/8 alike :
repair-windows-without-a-dvd

Note: Even when receiving the "NTDLR is missing" message, you _can_ boot the Restored OS by doing the following:
1. Insert Hiren's CD back into your DVD.
2. Restart.
3. In Hiren's menu, use the first option, which is booting from hard-drive. Hiren's will directly boot your OS. It somehow bypasses the MBR issue.
Of course this is not a long-term solution, but in this manner, if you forgot to create the Windows Repair DVD beforehand, you can create it afterwards in the restored OS.