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#1
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Reinstall 8.1
I decided that my best route to success was to throw in the towel and
reinstall Windows 8.1. I have the "Dell Factory Backup" DVD set that I made with Dell's Backup and Recovery, and I also have the Dell-provided "Windows 8.1 Recovery Media" and the drivers DVDs. Not knowing which one I should use, I contacted Dell and got this interesting response from a "Dell TechCenter RockStar": "If they are both DVDs then neither. Optical Drives and DVDs have issues with the UEFI BIOS and SecureBoot. "The set of DVDs may be burned incorrectly and there's a high chance they won't work. These would restore factory settings including system drivers if they worked. "In order to accommodate UEFI and SecureBoot I recommend installing with a FAT32 formatted USB flash drive for the GPT partition scheme, see here Edition Windows 8.1: "http://dellwindowsreinstallationguide.com/download-microsoft-windows-and-office/download-microsoft-windows/download-windows-8-1-retail-and-oem-iso/" I find that a bit bizarre! I'm not supposed to use either the DVDs I made from their backup program or the ones they sent me??? What's with that?? Anyway, I made a bootable (I hope) USB flash drive from the instructions on the referenced website and will reinstall from that after a good night's sleep. :-) |
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#2
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Reinstall 8.1
On 04/30/2015 12:47 PM, Alek wrote:
I decided that my best route to success was to throw in the towel and reinstall Windows 8.1. I have the "Dell Factory Backup" DVD set that I made with Dell's Backup and Recovery, and I also have the Dell-provided "Windows 8.1 Recovery Media" and the drivers DVDs. Not knowing which one I should use, I contacted Dell and got this interesting response from a "Dell TechCenter RockStar": "If they are both DVDs then neither. Optical Drives and DVDs have issues with the UEFI BIOS and SecureBoot. "The set of DVDs may be burned incorrectly and there's a high chance they won't work. These would restore factory settings including system drivers if they worked. "In order to accommodate UEFI and SecureBoot I recommend installing with a FAT32 formatted USB flash drive for the GPT partition scheme, see here Edition Windows 8.1: "http://dellwindowsreinstallationguide.com/download-microsoft-windows-and-office/download-microsoft-windows/download-windows-8-1-retail-and-oem-iso/" I find that a bit bizarre! I'm not supposed to use either the DVDs I made from their backup program or the ones they sent me??? What's with that?? Anyway, I made a bootable (I hope) USB flash drive from the instructions on the referenced website and will reinstall from that after a good night's sleep. :-) If the DVD's checksum is correct, then there should be no problem. Unless the DVD is dirty or scratched it would be fine. At any rate there could certainly be no file system corruption as would be possible with a fat32 drive. |
#3
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Reinstall 8.1
Alek wrote:
I decided that my best route to success was to throw in the towel and reinstall Windows 8.1. I have the "Dell Factory Backup" DVD set that I made with Dell's Backup and Recovery, and I also have the Dell-provided "Windows 8.1 Recovery Media" and the drivers DVDs. Not knowing which one I should use, I contacted Dell and got this interesting response from a "Dell TechCenter RockStar": "If they are both DVDs then neither. Optical Drives and DVDs have issues with the UEFI BIOS and SecureBoot. "The set of DVDs may be burned incorrectly and there's a high chance they won't work. These would restore factory settings including system drivers if they worked. "In order to accommodate UEFI and SecureBoot I recommend installing with a FAT32 formatted USB flash drive for the GPT partition scheme, see here Edition Windows 8.1: "http://dellwindowsreinstallationguide.com/download-microsoft-windows-and-office/download-microsoft-windows/download-windows-8-1-retail-and-oem-iso/" I find that a bit bizarre! I'm not supposed to use either the DVDs I made from their backup program or the ones they sent me??? What's with that?? Anyway, I made a bootable (I hope) USB flash drive from the instructions on the referenced website and will reinstall from that after a good night's sleep. :-) While the iso (reset/refresh media iirc mentioned by others in this forum) should work fine thought it does seem strange that Dell sent you to a non-Official Windows site and a blog without Dell's trademark published by a Dell Community member. -- ...winston msft mvp consumer apps |
#4
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Reinstall 8.1
philo wrote on 4/30/2015 2:06 PM:
On 04/30/2015 12:47 PM, Alek wrote: I decided that my best route to success was to throw in the towel and reinstall Windows 8.1. I have the "Dell Factory Backup" DVD set that I made with Dell's Backup and Recovery, and I also have the Dell-provided "Windows 8.1 Recovery Media" and the drivers DVDs. Not knowing which one I should use, I contacted Dell and got this interesting response from a "Dell TechCenter RockStar": "If they are both DVDs then neither. Optical Drives and DVDs have issues with the UEFI BIOS and SecureBoot. "The set of DVDs may be burned incorrectly and there's a high chance they won't work. These would restore factory settings including system drivers if they worked. "In order to accommodate UEFI and SecureBoot I recommend installing with a FAT32 formatted USB flash drive for the GPT partition scheme, see here Edition Windows 8.1: "http://dellwindowsreinstallationguide.com/download-microsoft-windows-and-office/download-microsoft-windows/download-windows-8-1-retail-and-oem-iso/" I find that a bit bizarre! I'm not supposed to use either the DVDs I made from their backup program or the ones they sent me??? What's with that?? Anyway, I made a bootable (I hope) USB flash drive from the instructions on the referenced website and will reinstall from that after a good night's sleep. :-) If the DVD's checksum is correct, then there should be no problem. Unless the DVD is dirty or scratched it would be fine. At any rate there could certainly be no file system corruption as would be possible with a fat32 drive. So which should I use, the Dell DVD or the ones I made? |
#5
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Reinstall 8.1
Alek wrote:
I decided that my best route to success was to throw in the towel and reinstall Windows 8.1. I have the "Dell Factory Backup" DVD set that I made with Dell's Backup and Recovery, and I also have the Dell-provided "Windows 8.1 Recovery Media" and the drivers DVDs. Not knowing which one I should use, I contacted Dell and got this interesting response from a "Dell TechCenter RockStar": "If they are both DVDs then neither. Optical Drives and DVDs have issues with the UEFI BIOS and SecureBoot. "The set of DVDs may be burned incorrectly and there's a high chance they won't work. These would restore factory settings including system drivers if they worked. "In order to accommodate UEFI and SecureBoot I recommend installing with a FAT32 formatted USB flash drive for the GPT partition scheme, see here Edition Windows 8.1: "http://dellwindowsreinstallationguide.com/download-microsoft-windows-and-office/download-microsoft-windows/download-windows-8-1-retail-and-oem-iso/" I find that a bit bizarre! I'm not supposed to use either the DVDs I made from their backup program or the ones they sent me??? What's with that?? Anyway, I made a bootable (I hope) USB flash drive from the instructions on the referenced website and will reinstall from that after a good night's sleep. :-) Roughly translating what the RockStar said: "Sir, you should make a complete backup of that hard drive, before you begin. Because apparently I have no faith in any of the provided materials." If the recovery partition is present on that hard drive, it should be able to place a fresh copy of the OS on the C: partition of the hard drive. You would consult the user manual, to see how that is done. If the hard drive contents were completely erased, you'd look at your DVD set. When you first made the DVD set, you would have copied them with Imgburn. Converted each DVD to an ISO9660 file. Then, if there is any future concern about the integrity of the DVDs, you could burn fresh ones. At the time the DVDs are burned, the burning software should be doing its own verify, to verify the checksum of what was burned. Otherwise, if the burning software doesn't verify what was done, there is a small chance you could have incomplete images. On my laptop, I reinstalled Windows 7 SP1. I used a downloaded Retail DVD, matching the version ("Home Premium"). I needed the Drivers CD, as it has a video driver for the graphics. There may not be any better version of the graphics driver, except on that CD. I needed to do phone activation, using the COA license key. In the case of Windows 8, the key is stored in the BIOS, and installation of Retail matching version, the license aspect should be handled with no user intervention at all. I have no idea whether UEFI or SecureBoot are going to cause a problem. Making a suggestion it would cause a problem, is to suggest Dell never tests their stuff. Paul |
#6
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Reinstall 8.1
.. . .winston wrote on 4/30/2015 2:19 PM:
Alek wrote: I decided that my best route to success was to throw in the towel and reinstall Windows 8.1. I have the "Dell Factory Backup" DVD set that I made with Dell's Backup and Recovery, and I also have the Dell-provided "Windows 8.1 Recovery Media" and the drivers DVDs. Not knowing which one I should use, I contacted Dell and got this interesting response from a "Dell TechCenter RockStar": "If they are both DVDs then neither. Optical Drives and DVDs have issues with the UEFI BIOS and SecureBoot. "The set of DVDs may be burned incorrectly and there's a high chance they won't work. These would restore factory settings including system drivers if they worked. "In order to accommodate UEFI and SecureBoot I recommend installing with a FAT32 formatted USB flash drive for the GPT partition scheme, see here Edition Windows 8.1: "http://dellwindowsreinstallationguide.com/download-microsoft-windows-and-office/download-microsoft-windows/download-windows-8-1-retail-and-oem-iso/" I find that a bit bizarre! I'm not supposed to use either the DVDs I made from their backup program or the ones they sent me??? What's with that?? Anyway, I made a bootable (I hope) USB flash drive from the instructions on the referenced website and will reinstall from that after a good night's sleep. :-) While the iso (reset/refresh media iirc mentioned by others in this forum) should work fine thought it does seem strange that Dell sent you to a non-Official Windows site and a blog without Dell's trademark published by a Dell Community member. True! So which of the three would you use if you were me? |
#7
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Reinstall 8.1
Stormin' Norman wrote on 4/30/2015 2:28 PM:
On Thu, 30 Apr 2015 13:47:24 -0400, Alek wrote: I decided that my best route to success was to throw in the towel and reinstall Windows 8.1. Why? What insurmountable problems are you experiencing? I don't want to go there, thank you. Let's just say it's an accumulation of a bunch of things. :-) |
#8
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Reinstall 8.1
Paul wrote on 4/30/2015 3:59 PM:
Roughly translating what the RockStar said: "Sir, you should make a complete backup of that hard drive, before you begin. Because apparently I have no faith in any of the provided materials." Wow! Quite an interpretation!! Since what's on the HD will be obliterated regardless of what method I use, making a backup is not an issue. When you first made the DVD set, you would have copied them with Imgburn. Converted each DVD to an ISO9660 file. Then, if there is any future concern about the integrity of the DVDs, you could burn fresh ones. At the time the DVDs are burned, the burning software should be doing its own verify, to verify the checksum of what was burned. Otherwise, if the burning software doesn't verify what was done, there is a small chance you could have incomplete images. I never in a million years would have thought of that and I have never seen it suggested before. |
#9
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Reinstall 8.1
On 04/30/2015 01:21 PM, Alek wrote:
p "http://dellwindowsreinstallationguide.com/download-microsoft-windows-and-office/download-microsoft-windows/download-windows-8-1-retail-and-oem-iso/" I find that a bit bizarre! I'm not supposed to use either the DVDs I made from their backup program or the ones they sent me??? What's with that?? Anyway, I made a bootable (I hope) USB flash drive from the instructions on the referenced website and will reinstall from that after a good night's sleep. :-) If the DVD's checksum is correct, then there should be no problem. Unless the DVD is dirty or scratched it would be fine. At any rate there could certainly be no file system corruption as would be possible with a fat32 drive. So which should I use, the Dell DVD or the ones I made? I doubt it matters, try one. If for any reason it does not work, then try the other. |
#10
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Reinstall 8.1
Alek wrote:
. . .winston wrote on 4/30/2015 2:19 PM: Alek wrote: I decided that my best route to success was to throw in the towel and reinstall Windows 8.1. I have the "Dell Factory Backup" DVD set that I made with Dell's Backup and Recovery, and I also have the Dell-provided "Windows 8.1 Recovery Media" and the drivers DVDs. Not knowing which one I should use, I contacted Dell and got this interesting response from a "Dell TechCenter RockStar": "If they are both DVDs then neither. Optical Drives and DVDs have issues with the UEFI BIOS and SecureBoot. "The set of DVDs may be burned incorrectly and there's a high chance they won't work. These would restore factory settings including system drivers if they worked. "In order to accommodate UEFI and SecureBoot I recommend installing with a FAT32 formatted USB flash drive for the GPT partition scheme, see here Edition Windows 8.1: "http://dellwindowsreinstallationguide.com/download-microsoft-windows-and-office/download-microsoft-windows/download-windows-8-1-retail-and-oem-iso/" I find that a bit bizarre! I'm not supposed to use either the DVDs I made from their backup program or the ones they sent me??? What's with that?? Anyway, I made a bootable (I hope) USB flash drive from the instructions on the referenced website and will reinstall from that after a good night's sleep. :-) While the iso (reset/refresh media iirc mentioned by others in this forum) should work fine thought it does seem strange that Dell sent you to a non-Official Windows site and a blog without Dell's trademark published by a Dell Community member. True! So which of the three would you use if you were me? None of the above. I would have purchased a retail Win 8.1 and wiped the entire Dell drive after downloading the Dell hardware drivers in advance in case they were not included in Windows 8.1. e.g. Touchpad, lan and wifi, Function keys, chipset, etc. -- ...winston msft mvp consumer apps |
#11
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Reinstall 8.1
.. . .winston wrote on 5/1/2015 1:21 AM:
Alek wrote: snip So which of the three would you use if you were me? None of the above. I would have purchased a retail Win 8.1 and wiped the entire Dell drive after downloading the Dell hardware drivers in advance in case they were not included in Windows 8.1. e.g. Touchpad, lan and wifi, Function keys, chipset, etc. Let me understand what you are saying. After buying a computer with Windows 8.x installed, you would buy your own copy of Windows 8.1 for an extra $100 or so? If that comes on a DVD, isn't that risky for a machine with UEFI?? I hear that such computers often do not recognize bootable DVDs. Thanks. |
#12
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Reinstall 8.1
Alek wrote:
. . .winston wrote on 5/1/2015 1:21 AM: Alek wrote: snip So which of the three would you use if you were me? None of the above. I would have purchased a retail Win 8.1 and wiped the entire Dell drive after downloading the Dell hardware drivers in advance in case they were not included in Windows 8.1. e.g. Touchpad, lan and wifi, Function keys, chipset, etc. Let me understand what you are saying. After buying a computer with Windows 8.x installed, you would buy your own copy of Windows 8.1 for an extra $100 or so? If that comes on a DVD, isn't that risky for a machine with UEFI?? I hear that such computers often do not recognize bootable DVDs. Thanks. Yes. In fact, I would also yank the original OEM drive, replace it and install a new drive (SSD or Spinner). Two laptops in this house (Acer and Lenovo) both with UEFI and Windows installed from separate retail/product key 8.1 media. The Acer was Costco purchase, the Lenovo a refurbished, both came with Win 8.0 pre-installed. -- ...winston msft mvp consumer apps |
#13
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Reinstall 8.1
.. . .winston wrote on 5/1/2015 6:11 PM:
Alek wrote: . . .winston wrote on 5/1/2015 1:21 AM: Alek wrote: snip So which of the three would you use if you were me? None of the above. I would have purchased a retail Win 8.1 and wiped the entire Dell drive after downloading the Dell hardware drivers in advance in case they were not included in Windows 8.1. e.g. Touchpad, lan and wifi, Function keys, chipset, etc. Let me understand what you are saying. After buying a computer with Windows 8.x installed, you would buy your own copy of Windows 8.1 for an extra $100 or so? If that comes on a DVD, isn't that risky for a machine with UEFI?? I hear that such computers often do not recognize bootable DVDs. Thanks. Yes. In fact, I would also yank the original OEM drive, replace it and install a new drive (SSD or Spinner). Two laptops in this house (Acer and Lenovo) both with UEFI and Windows installed from separate retail/product key 8.1 media. The Acer was Costco purchase, the Lenovo a refurbished, both came with Win 8.0 pre-installed. And what is the motivation for doing those? IOW, what do you end up with that's so much more [fill in appropriate word] than what you would have had you not done them? Thanks. |
#14
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Reinstall 8.1
Alek wrote:
. . .winston wrote on 5/1/2015 6:11 PM: Alek wrote: . . .winston wrote on 5/1/2015 1:21 AM: Alek wrote: snip So which of the three would you use if you were me? None of the above. I would have purchased a retail Win 8.1 and wiped the entire Dell drive after downloading the Dell hardware drivers in advance in case they were not included in Windows 8.1. e.g. Touchpad, lan and wifi, Function keys, chipset, etc. Let me understand what you are saying. After buying a computer with Windows 8.x installed, you would buy your own copy of Windows 8.1 for an extra $100 or so? If that comes on a DVD, isn't that risky for a machine with UEFI?? I hear that such computers often do not recognize bootable DVDs. Thanks. Yes. In fact, I would also yank the original OEM drive, replace it and install a new drive (SSD or Spinner). Two laptops in this house (Acer and Lenovo) both with UEFI and Windows installed from separate retail/product key 8.1 media. The Acer was Costco purchase, the Lenovo a refurbished, both came with Win 8.0 pre-installed. And what is the motivation for doing those? IOW, what do you end up with that's so much more [fill in appropriate word] than what you would have had you not done them? Thanks. The original o/s and drive intact until I decide to dispose of the device. No installed OEM unwanted software. Smaller footprint. No need for OEM support since the installed o/s is full retail. The ability if the new drive fails to have an immediate replacement drive backup that can be inserted and up and running in less than 5 min or if desired restored from a recent backup or cloned image. -- ...winston msft mvp consumer apps |
#15
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Reinstall 8.1
On Fri, 01 May 2015 19:00:03 -0400, Alek wrote:
what do you end up with that's so much more [fill in appropriate word] than what you would have had you not done them? 'expensive' maybe the word you're looking for. |
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