I have a near 5 year old Dell 3847 running Windows 7 Home Premium 64-bit. Some time back the OS choked on an update causing all restarts to go through a cycle of 3 successive reboots. Attempts to use Windows diagnose and repair processes all fail (SFC, MSI, et al).

I have a Dell OS Recovery and Restore USB dongle key which is supposed to restore the OS to the "as delivered" state while backing up apps and data and reinstalling them after the OS is restored. Tried it and the damn thing hung showing 100% backup. And yes there was plenty of room on the external drive used for this purpose. Had planned to utilize Microsoft's "convenience" update which cuts way down on the number of KBs needed to be installed to bring the OS to current status.

I have a valid OS license obviously but Dell, like most purveyors, no longer supplies OS installation CDs. The dongle key was what they sent when I asked.

Anyone have a set of old Win 7 SP1 Home Premium 64-bit CDs they'd like to sell?

Send me a message.


It's one DVD, by the way, not a CD set.

quote:

Originally posted by Leeann:
Send me a message.


It's one DVD, by the way, not a CD set.

Appreciate the response but you have no email addy in your profile. SigForum does not have a PM feature. So I can't send you a message either.

Then why does it ask if you want to allow PMs? Strange.

But my email is in my profile now.

Are you opposed to using Windows 10? If not you could try the using the Win10 Media Tool to create a Windows 10 USB installer:

https://www.microsoft.com/en-u...e-download/windows10

quote:

Originally posted by Leeann:
Then why does it ask if you want to allow PMs? Strange.

But my email is in my profile now.

Para suppressed the function if I understand correctly.

Appreciate the help here. It is most appreciated!

quote:

Originally posted by lkdr1989:
Are you opposed to using Windows 10?

In a word, yes.

You can download the Dell OS Recovery Tool if you haven't already.
You will have to reinstall your apps and transfer your data but it should do what you want.
As far as "restore the OS to the "as delivered" state while backing up apps and data and reinstalling them after the OS is restored" I would just rather (albeit more work) do the migration of apps/data myself.
Never trusted the wonder-do-it-all software.
YMMV

I just did this (and created a related thread) last week. I have an older Acer laptop and I wanted to do a fresh install on a new SSD hard drive. I found a resource that has the old OS’s available for download as ISO’s and then used the Microsoft too create a bootable USB from that ISO.

It worked perfectly, the only difference being I was installing to a new drive.

I then used a backup created from the Windows utility to restore personal files back on the computer.

I can’t remember the name of the resource but I’m sure I could track it down again.

As an aside, how much ram is in your machine? I took a pair of 1GB sticks out of mine and installed a pair of 2GB sticks. You can have the 1GB if it would be an upgrade.

quote:

Originally posted by smschulz:
You can download the Dell OS Recovery Tool [/url] if you haven't already.
You will have to reinstall your apps and transfer your data but it should do what you want.
As far as "restore the OS to the "as delivered" state while backing up apps and data and reinstalling them after the OS is restored" I would just rather (albeit more work) do the migration of apps/data myself.
Never trusted the wonder-do-it-all software.
YMMV

Interesting as the Dell OS Recovery and Restore USB Key is different. See the last video on this Dell page for a rundown:
https://www.dell.com/support/a...re-usb-drive?lang=en

quote:

Originally posted by thumperfbc:

As an aside, how much ram is in your machine? I took a pair of 1GB sticks out of mine and installed a pair of 2GB sticks. You can have the 1GB if it would be an upgrade.

Thanks for the offer but I'm okay. Here's a Speccy summary of my machine: