Dell forum: reinstalling windows from the dell cd

I do see a partition, FAT file system. 31 mb in size. healthy EISA configuration. is that a copy of the OS?

if yes, how would I find out? If yes, how could I install that to the C drive?

thanks for your help so far btw...

This procedure varies by Dell machine.

So........based on this Dell machine.

Boot the machine.
At the Dell logo start tapping F8.
That gets me to "advanced boot options".

From there I can navigate to "Dell factory image restore".

all I see are the following:

safe mode
safe mode w networking
safe mode w command prompt

enable boot loggin
enable vga mode
last known good configuration (recent settings that worked)
directory services restore mode (windows domain controllers only)
debugging mode
disable auto restart on system failure.

start windows normally
reboot
return to os choices menu.

That's the Windows options menu. Either you press f8 to late or it isn't f8 on your machine. On my Dell netbook it's ctrl-F11 to boot directly in the recovery partition, and it could be f12 to boot into the boot choice menu, I don't remember. But it was in the documentation that came with it.
As Bob said, it's different between makers and models.

Anyway, 31 MB surely isn't enough to contain a copy of the OS. But it might be in a hidden partition. If you can't find it in the documentation or on the Dell support site or via Dell customer service, it might be a good idea to download GPARTED (a free graphic partition editor) to have a look.

The worst that can happen is that there's no such partition and Dell doesn't sell the recovery media anymore (did you ask?). Then you'll have to buy a new OS license to install an OS (or switch to Linux). But, as I said above already, it MIGHT work (more or less) with that other recovery CD.

Kees

I can run puppy linux from cd without installing. it's fast on this old dinosaur pc. may try that for now. thanks again for your help everyone.