Restoring to Dell factory image WIM file

[Guest2]

I have now downloaded all drivers needed for my e7240 and have Windows 7 on a bootable usb stick

Using the Dell recovery manager on the e7240 I also created another WIM on an external HDD

I tried to restore to the Dell factory image WIM but it cannot be located, which I thought this was supposed to reside on the 8gb partition

It seems it can't be used as is encrypted for business users only - http://en.community.dell.com/support-forums/desktop/f/3514/t/19444472.aspx

Two questions -

Can the WIM I created on external HDD be used?

Would you recommend I format the machine, installing Windows from USB stick, also getting rid of the partition as it cannot be used anyway?

 

[Guest2]

Answered my own questions -


No, it cannot. Looks like you have to have created the WIM on the same OS install

I have formatted and got rid of the partition seems as I couldn't use it to restore anyway. Will probably just buy a 32gb memory stick and backup a system image to that