Dell software trouble

[collisster]

My flatmate is having trouble with his dell laptop at the moment and after hours of tech support over the phone they decide its a software issue and claim he has to buy their 'software warranty'

He doesn't mind about losing the stuff on there so is fine with just running the restore disk but cant get it to run.

Does anyone know how to do it or have a guide on forcing this laptop to restore windows?

cheers
Martin

 

[Selekt0r]

If it's a relatively recent Dell laptop then there will probably be a 'restore partition' on the hard disk which contains diagnostic tools + the image required to restore the laptop to its factory state.

When you power the laptop on you should be able to press F2 to enter the BIOS settings, or F12 to enter diagnostics (which will also give you the option to do a factory restore). I guess it may be different on his laptop, but worth a try...?

 

[Bubba]

Should be ctrl + f11 on bootup for dell recovery partition if its XP.

If it is vista or windows 7 then press F8 and go into startup repair, it will have an option in here for the factory image restore.