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Restore Dell Inspiron Mini 10 to Factory Settings

dell Inspiron Mini 10
Learn how to restore Dell Inspiron Mini 10 to Factory Settings
dell Inspiron Mini 10

Learn how to restore Dell Inspiron Mini 10 to Factory Settings

If you want the solution, on how to restore your dell Inspiron mini 10 without the background information –feel free to skip to the bottom of the article for the solution.

Instructions for PC Restore on Dell Inspirion Mini 10 Don’t Work

If like me you’ve purchased a Dell Inspiron mini and you’re looking to perform a factory restore on it you’ve probably run into difficulty. You’ll want to perform a factory restore in order to get your system back looking like when you first purchased the machine. The chances are however that you’ve checked out the manual only to find that the instructions on page 42 of the manual entitled “Using Dell PC Restore” don’t actually work.

In particular, they’ll tell you that in order to perform a PC Restore on your Dell Inspirion you need to:

  1. Turn on the computer and during the bottom process, a blue bar with
    www.dell.com appears at the top of the screen.
  2. Immediately upon seeing the blue bar, press <Ctrl><F11> if you wait too
    long and the operating system logo appears continue to wait until you see
    the Microsoft Windows desktop; then shut down and try again.

The only problem with this, I found on my Dell Outlet purchased Windows 7 mini 10 with Windows Starter was that these instructions no matter how many
times I tried just don’t work. Given that that my Inspiron mini didn’t come with a factory restore CD, I naturally checked for a recovery partition on the hard drive – I noticed that this wasn’t visible in Windows Explorer; however, a partition did exist when I checked using the defragmentation tool provided in Windows.

Restoring Dell Computer by Phoning Customer Support

In the instruction manual I was advised that “Dell PC Restore by Symantec and Dell Factory Image Restore may not be available in certain countries or on
certain computers” naturally, given that I could see no evidence of this software on my computer, nor could I access it using the shortcut, thus I phoned
Dell technical support to either provide assistance with this problem. Quite frankly after 30 minutes on the telephone, they were completely useless –
firstly they denied that there was an image on the hard drive, they denied that I was legally obliged to be able to restore my computer and that it was
impossible to restore my Windows 7 operating system without a recovery CD which would require me to purchase an external hard drive (cost £40) and a recovery CD at £60 plus delivery fees. To this, I told them no thanks!

Anyhow, I eventually figured out a solution by a lot of trial and error. I found this article on restoring the Dell Inspirion mini 10 which isn’t entirely
accurate but it pointed me in the right direction.

Solution to Restoring Dell Mini 10 to factory settings on Windows 7 Starter

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Restart the computer and press F8 when you receive the Dell loading screen and keep holding it till it the computer beeps , then release it and you’ll find
that you get into a Windows loading screen it gives you a variety of options – select the “Repair your computer” option by highlighting it using your arrow
keys and press enter.

You’ll now be asked to login to your machine, you’ll need to use the same username/password that you use to access Windows normally.

Now, instead of accessing Windows you’ll get a screen with a whole variety of options at the bottom, of that list you’ll find a hyperlink that allows you to
select “Dell Factory Restore Image” – select this and follow the on screen instructions.

Author Notes – I was really disappointed with the fact that Dell had shipped to me incorrect factory restore settings in the manual and then provided me
inaccurate information on the telephone – even after my insistence that this information was inaccurate.

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