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Recreating the Dell Diagnostic Utility Partition

post #1 of 5
9/27/06 at 10:09am
Thread Starter 
Howdy Folks,

I wish to recreate the original Dell Diagnostic Utility partition that was on my I9200 nwhen I bought it. I have since swapped out te 40 GB hard drive for a 120 GB, but carelessly wiped the old one clean before installing it into an older Gateway beater lappy I have.
I have Partition Magic, so I can make a new partition.
I would like to know what type, what size, and what name I should make this new partition. What other attributes are necessary for it to work like the original?
Is making it bootable a function of the type of partition, or the software that will be put on it?


Thanks.
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post #2 of 5
9/27/06 at 6:58pm
See my webpage: Inside the Dell Utility Partition.

Dan Goodell
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post #3 of 5
9/27/06 at 8:29pm
Thread Starter 
I saw that this morning.
It's boderline "over my head", particularly with regards to the partition table manager utility used in PowerQuest.
I have a copy of Partition Magic 8, and I don't seen to have that partition table editor illustrated on your site.
I have the Dell Utility .exe saved, and I've created a 40MB FAT partition before C:.
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post #4 of 5
9/27/06 at 11:14pm
"I have a copy of Partition Magic 8, and I don't seen to have that partition table editor illustrated on your site." It's on the PM CD in the \utility\dos folder, it doesn't get "installed" to your hard disk.

How are you running PM--from CD or from Windows? You're much better off running from CD. The PM CD itself should be bootable, or else boot from a DOS boot disk (floppy, CD, or USB flash drive), swap in the PM CD, and run \english\dosmake\disk2\pqmagic.exe to launch the PM GUI.

"I've created a 40MB FAT partition before C:." Okay, so you're up to Step 3 in these instructions.

If you created the 40MB partition with PM, it should already be formatted. If not, go back to Step 2.
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post #5 of 5
9/28/06 at 9:40am
Thread Starter 
OK, Whole new ball game...
I poked around on the original drive and found (much to my pleasant surprise) that I had not erased the Dell utility partition.
So I put the hdd in an enclosure, and using PM, I managed to copy the partition as is to the beginning of my new drive.
My current drive now looks like this:
(*) 39.2 MB Primary
(C) "System" 50.1 GB Primary
(D) "Data" 50.1 GB Primary
(E) "Backup" 11.7 GB Primary

The Dell Diagnostics Utility does work. I can boot into it and run it, but I cannot reinstall Norton GoBack now.
I've uninstalled and reinstalled Norton GoBack, but I get a blue screen telling me that Windows has been shut down to prevent damage to it. (I have DEP turned off, so I expected that would not happen, but it did.)
The message says there is an "Unmountable_boot_volume".
I tried changing the De partition to Logical, and Norton GoBack installed just fine, but then the Dell Diagnostics could not find the partition.

Thoughts?
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