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

[Al Hartman]

I'm good.


The new hard drive arrived today and is installed. I have a Dell Windows 
7 Professional 64 Bit DVD if I need it. The Recovery Discs didn't get 
here today, but should arrive by Monday.


I verified the old drive is definitely bad. I used Linux MINT to wipe 
the old drive and reformat it. It found errors. Then, I reinstalled 
Windows 7 last night just to play. Windows 7 picked up problems from the 
S.M.A.R.T. hard drive feature and kept warning me that the hard drive 
was about to fail. I went past the errors and loaded it up anyway. 

But, I'm going to trash the drive. It obviously can't be trusted even as 
a backup drive.


Dell said that I could load a generic Dell Windows 7 on my Laptop, 
download the drivers and install them, then go to "My Dell Downloads" 
and download all the pre-loaded software. I have never gotten that site 
to work.

I installed the drivers. I went to the My Dell Downloads site intending 
to download everything to a USB key for safe keeping.

Nope. Wouldn't work. Said my system's Service code was invalid. Wouldn't 
let me in. As I told the Dell techs on Monday it wouldn't work. I 
immediately sent a e-mail to the rude Dell manager telling her about 
this.

This is going into my letter to Dell Corporate, you betcha!


This is why I wanted the recovery DVDs. Some of you may be OK with a 
generic Windows 7 install, and shareware apps.  But, I actually use many 
of the pre-installed apps like the DVD player and the Roxio burner 
software. I do replace the Anti-virus with something more recent, and 
less resource hoggy.


The old drive was a Samsung if anyone was interested. The new drive is a 
7200 RPM Toshiba.


-[ Al ]-

P.S.: There is a program called PCDecrapifier 
(http://www.pcdecrapifier.com/) that is reputed to remove crapware from 
new PCs.

On Sat, Aug 29, 2015 at 02:01 PM, tonym wrote:

> Al,
>
> Let me know if you get into a pinch and the recovery set you ordered 
> does not work.
> I should have a Win7Pro SP1 x86_64 license you can have, media and 
> all, still sealed (System Builder Edition).
> You would just have to deal with downloading drivers from the MS site.
>
> I have much disdain for recovery sets and OEM bloatware, so I rarely 
> do the recovery DVDs.
> I do, however, require media before any purchase, so if recovery 
> non-bloat media is not an option/standard feature, I pass and keep 
> looking.
> With recovery from factory, you just place the bloat back on, and 
> uninstalling 27 programs is a PITA I have no time for.
>
> Tony