Recover XP on Dell Inspiron using Dell recovery disk

[raygg]

A friend of a friend asked me to help her with her Dell Inspiron running Win XP Pro. I think she has an Inspiron 6000 abt 6-8 yrs old with a valid COA sticker of xp Pro. It was running slowly and she pretty well deleted everything but the OS to try to clean it up using the Delete Program facility. She also ran defrag several times. She did not know how to change things in the registry. Then she found she could not connect to the internet. I found that I could not get the Windows Internet COnnecting Service to Start no matter what I tried. So I suspect she deleted something related to it. Desktop activities seem to work ok except the browser cannot connect.

I have a couple of old Dell laptops and I have a valid dell xp pro recovery disk. Can I use that disk to do a recovery on her machine to repair the broken service? I am thinking that I just use the repair option to do this. Alternatively if that does not work, can I do a full disk wipe and reinstall using that disk but plug in her COA code using this disk?

 

[edfair]

You would want to do a fresh install and let it do a repair when it finds a previous version. This is separate from the repair portion that gets into command prompt.

There probably is a recovery partition on the hard drive. IIRC it is [F12] on cold boot to access it.

Every time I've done a fresh install on Dells the XP has not given an opportunity to load the key.

Ed Fair
Give the wrong symptoms, get the wrong solutions.

 

[raygg]

Thanks so much for your quick response.

"There probably is a recovery partition on the hard drive. IIRC it is [F12] on cold boot to access it."
???? not sure I understand this sentence.
1. Does IIRC refer to the Windows IIC?
2. What does the reference to F12 mean?

It has been a at least 5 years since I tried to use the Dell recovery disk to do an install.

3. Otherwise I understand you to mean that I could use my recovery disk and install XP on her pc and it will not ask for the COA code.
4. During that install you are suggesting that if the install finds a problem it can repair it will give me the option to do the repair. Correct?
5. If I tell it to try to do the repair and the repair fails then I guess the thing to do is to restart the install and just let it go to do the reinstall. Correct?
6. On another subject - I have a 6 or 7 year old Dell desktop of my own that for some reason will not accept an update from XP SP2 to XP SP3. I use this box occasionally to run a few older apps I have and games.

7. Now that this new problem has presented itself - it would appear the approach to fixing this desktop is basically the same as recovering my friend of a friend's laptop. RIght?

 

[edfair]

If I Recall Correctly" you are given a choice during bootup, [DEL] to get to CMOS setup, [F10] or [F12] (function keys) to get to bootup options. If you have a recovery partition bootup options will get you to a point where you can use it.

3) yes

4) if you choose to do an install and it finds a previous version it will alternately do an overlay install of missing stuff to the previous location. I've never checked to see what possible errors it might fix.

5) I would probably take the install to the point of removing the previous partition and recreate everything. just be aware that you may need to find a SP2 source if your CD is an earlier version. Dell provided 4 levels at various times, plane jane, SP1, SP2, and SP3. Also, the OS install does just that. Applications are another story.

6&7) If you have install stuff for your apps and any data backed up, yeah.



Ed Fair
Give the wrong symptoms, get the wrong solutions.