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View Full Version : Uninstalling/reinstalling Windows question

drhowarddrfine
03-30-2009, 04:46 PM
My next door neighbor died. His wife gave me his brand new Dell laptop for free. Brand new, in the box!

I'm going to immediately put FreeBSD on it but I don't recall what happens if I ever would want to put Vista back on. There are only recover or reinstallation disks but, iirc, they need an ondisk hidden partition to put everything back together. Or am I wrong and you can reinstall the complete OS with the recovery disks? (I'll be reformatting the entire disk.)

I tried looking at Dell's site but couldn't find anything, of course. I have a corporate account but can't figure out how to get into the forums. (Sheesh!)
Apostropartheid
03-30-2009, 05:25 PM
Dells usually come with a DVD labelled "Operating System". This will contain a complete copy of the Windows installation. Dell also usually have an on-disk partition in addition to this disk, which can be accessed by pressing a key when the BIOS is booting up.
oracleguy
03-30-2009, 06:44 PM
When I setup my Dell laptop to dual boot I wiped the entire drive including the recovery partition and then when I installed Vista using the Dell DVD it worked fine. I believe the recovery partition is just to make it easier because it will reload the Dell image onto the main partition. Basically to make it easier for less computer savvy people to reload their OS.
drhowarddrfine
03-30-2009, 11:36 PM
Thanks guys. It seemed like I had a problem doing this with my wife's computer many years ago. The first thing I always did was format and reinstall Windows to get rid of all their junk and set it up the way I wanted. When I did that, the recovery disk didn't work but the guy at Dell said I was supposed to have another disk with the full install and made a stink with me when I told him it wasn't in the packaging.

I sometimes read about that additional partition and, with all the talk of installations checking in with Microsoft and Dell/HP/whoever during the install, I was worried I'd get into another stink if I wiped out that hidden partition.

I have not installed Windows on anything since 2005, I think.