[Coco] OT: Recovery Disc set for Dell Inspiron 15 3520...

[Al Hartman]

I've been able to access the partition, but the recovery program won't run 
to make the discs or a CD key.

The two files that make the discs are in a format called .WIM which are a 
special Microsoft compressed format, and are not ISO files. There is not an 
easy way to convert these to an ISO file to burn them. Every way I've tried 
has failed. Dell has been rude and unhelpful. My only hope has been to find 
someone else with the same model of laptop running the same version of 
Windows to run the Recovery program to burn me a set of Discs.

There are companies that claim to sell the discs, but I don't trust they are 
free of malware.

If something doesn't turn up in the next few days, I'll have to live with a 
generic Windows install and not have all the apps that came with the laptop 
when I bought it (DVD player, Roxio Burn software, etc...) I can replace 
most of it shareware/freeware. But I paid for the registered stuff and I'd 
like to have them back.

-[ Al ]-


-----Original Message----- 
From: Bill Pierce via Coco

Al, most (if not all) computer distributers now use the separate hidden 
partition (can't remember what it's called) on the HD as the recovery disk 
(which in the case of drive failure is useless), which is created on the fly 
as the system is installed. This reduced the cost of adding (and keeping up 
with) recovery disks as well as upped their profit margin.
If the drive will still spin and can be read (master boot sector trashed?), 
then the recovery partition could be accessed. "EasyBCD" is a boot sector 
recovery system and "PTEdit" will let you access the recovery disk (hidden 
from windows and dos). I have had to do this a couple of times.
Of course, if the drive is mechanically disabled, you are out of luck :-(