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190

Re-install of purchased software on purchased system

190 points posted to Accessories (Keyboards, etc.), Service and Support by turtleandhare May 16

From time to time, it does becomes necessary for a customer to get back to the software configuration delivered on their computer. The current process of supplying several disks to accomplish this fails for the following reasons.
The installation process expects users to pick out various drivers, etc. about which they know NOTHING. In fact the current process, for the average user, fails to live up to its expectations.
Proposal:
Deliver one or more CDs/DVDs/floppy disks/flash drive from which a boot process can occur that would initialize hard disk drives and then copy essentially a backup of the entire system as the system was first delivered to the purchaser. The boot up instructions could be externally printed on these disks. No longer would a user be expected to figure out what drivers are needed, etc. If Dell does not want to do this, then maybe this could be an extra cost option for mininal cost.

leolonewolf_nw08
May 16		 There is a prime problem and several others with this idea. That is, operating systems, programs, and drivers are updated on a fairly regular basis. To have a "Restore" disc with original software is fairly common these days and often times is stored to the HDD as well.

I think the Idea needs to be tweaked more to the lines of developing a written instruction sheet/booklet for even the most basic of users to be able to be able to do a "from-factory restore". Even incorporating an extra page that has the exact build specfications for the system so that users would know which devices require drivers and where to get the most up to date versions.

Overall I agree with the sentiment of a more basic restore feature of some kind.
turtleandhare
May 16		 Thanks for sharing your thoughts on this topic leolonewolf_nw08. Humm!! I guess part of my original thought process was to make the recovery as "fool proof" and SIMPLE as possible (and as fast as possible would be a plus). In the 2 1/2 years I have owned/used my system, I have not added any hardware devices. So while my original proposal ignored the fact that drivers certainly get updated, my system would still be returned to a workable / usable state. This scenario of course would not fit many folks. My proposal also ignored that once restored, the Microsoft updates needing to be applied to the OS still need to take place. How wonderful it would be if the reinstall of the OS could be done without the loss of user data. I saw a suggestion from someone else in this forum which suggested that the OS and user data be separated into different parititions. If this was combined with my original idea (or some variation thereof), then this idea would be even better since recovering your system to an earlier point in time does not cause you to lose your current data. It would be even better if the "data paritition" were on a disk separate from the OS. This whole idea, again, would be even better if the "OS paritition" were on a solid state disk (whose size would not have to be in the hundreds of GBs (maybe the "OS paritition" would only need to be in the 16 GB size or less).
undead999
May 16		 Dell does offer pc restore (XP) or dell facroty image restore (vista) built into the HD. If your HD fails Dell can sometime preload the drive with OS and preinstalled software. Dell will also walk customers thru a complete reinstall including drivers while system is under warranty.

in response to he followup post, data should be backed up as hard drives are the most likely part to fail inside any system. I agree that an SSD drive would be a good option, as an inexpensive option one could save documetns to a USB flash drive or digital mdia (SD card, CF card) leaving the media installed at all times.
wallyhorse
May 18		 I would if it is not presently being done is to include the media to restore the operating system in case of a hard drive failure or reformat is necessary. That used to always be done as I recall.
leolonewolf_nw08
May 19		 This is kind of related and could incorporate the onboard flash drive that I posted about earlier.

http://www.ideastorm.com/article/show/10080161/Driver_Storage__BuiltIn
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