Factory Reset Issue.

[TH3V1RU5]

I recently purchased a Dell Latitude 2120 that apparently was used by a school district, I purchased it at a Goodwill. I'm trying to do a factory reset and I've tried a million different ways from repeatedly pressing F8 to safe mode with command prompt. I have run out of ways that I know of, so if I could possibly get some help with bypassing the admin username and password prompt and just factory reset it, that would be much appreciated.

 

[dg1261]

If it was previously used by a school district, I would think they probably wiped the hard disk and installed their own custom image (since they'd probably be replicating it over a whole stable of identical machines). If they did, there probably is no Recovery partition.

You're in a Win7 forum, so I'll assume the machine currently has Win7 on it. If it's Win7, you may be able to tell if there's also a Recovery partition if you can get a look at the partition layout. If you can boot to Windows, take a look in Disk Management. If you can't boot to Windows, try booting from a linux live CD and look at the partition layout of the hard disk. You can also use a bootable partition management CD like Mini-Tools Partition Wizard or Macrium Reflect, if you already have one of those.

If the hard disk has a factory recovery partition, Dell's standard practice was to install a tiny (40-90 MB) first partition for Dell Utilities, followed by a 10-15 GB Recovery partition, followed by one or two very large partitions encompassing the OS and the rest of the hard disk.

If it doesn't have that 10-15 GB Recovery partition, then you're out of luck. You'd have to start over with a clean install.

 

[Barman58]

A lot of Business Dells (and a School District would be classed as this for supply purposes) were built to order from a menu and one of the options was an operating system. I purchased a lot of Dells without an OS, (especially for the first few years of XP when it was so unreliable to be of use for serious use. I would buy without the OS and install Win2000).

It is probable that a School District would use a Volume Licence plan for licencing and an Image for installing, and this is much easier to use if the disk is blank when supplied

 

[mrjimphelps]

You can download the factory restore media from Dell, or order a set of factory restore disks:

http://www.dell.com/support/content...-downloads/dell-backup-solutions/Media-backup

 

[Megahertz07]

Most OEM computers like Dell has an option to launch factory recover from BIOS. See your BIOS options.

 

[AddRAM]

If the PC has a readable key on the COA, my advice would be to clean install W7

Clean Install Windows 7 - Windows 7 Help Forums

 

[Megahertz07]

AddRam gave the best option as you won't get all the trash that comes with the computer.
You have to go to the Dell site to download the drivers.

For the updates, use the offline updates and the security only updates.
MS releases SP2 for Windows 7 - Windows 7 Help Forums

 

[TH3V1RU5]

If the PC has a readable key on the COA, my advice would be to clean install W7

Clean Install Windows 7 - Windows 7 Help Forums

So I've got the Win7 install but I still can't install Win7 without admin rights. Maybe this is a rookie question but how can I get around that?

 

[SIW2]

Where are you asked for admin username? Are you able to boot the installation media?

Usually there is an F key that is pressed at post ( after starting the machine, but before windows tries to load). Could be F2 or F11. That should bring up a one time boot menu. Select dvd drive and it will try to boot the installatoion media ( assuming you have the installation dvd in the drive).

 

[SIW2]

More likely to be F12 on your machine

Boot Sequence allows you to bypass the System Setup‐defined boot device order and boot directly to a specific device (for example: optical drive or hard drive or usb). During the Power-on Self Test (POST), when the Dell logo appears, you can:

Access System Setup by pressing F2 key
Or
Bring up the one-time boot menu by pressing F12 key

 

[TH3V1RU5]

Where are you asked for admin username? Are you able to boot the installation media?

Usually there is an F key that is pressed at post ( after starting the machine, but before windows tries to load). Could be F2 or F11. That should bring up a one time boot menu. Select dvd drive and it will try to boot the installatoion media ( assuming you have the installation dvd in the drive).

I don't have the disk but I do have the product key. Install file is on a jump drive.

 

[SIW2]

I assume jump drive = usb stick?

Plug in the usb stick. Select it from the one time boot menu. Probably F12 to bring up one time boot menu on Dell.

 

[TH3V1RU5]

Yes a usb stick. Sorry.
So far I have the setup file on a usb stick. I can't run that file because I don't have the admin username and password. I got the windows install screen to appear but I clicked install and an error box pops up telling me I can only install Windows from an Admin account. So...I did what you said and chose USB after pressing F12, it just starts up like normal and I'm back to square 1...

 

[Barman58]

To install from a USB stick (or Jump Drive), you have to prepare the stick to be Bootable, to do this you need an ISO file and specialist software to set-up and create the installer

I prefer the free Rufus Creation software, Do you have an ISO to use or are the Install files just in a folder? If so you may need to download a bootable .ISO file to proceed