I think your best bet is to hit up smaller mom and pop type PC shops. Online retailers usually just keep the latest and greatest versions around. Your only alternative then would be to uhhh"purchase" through uhhh Grey Market p2p type processes.

Which I would not suggest openly on the internet.

Yes that page is listed as a source in our original post. They did absolutely wonderful work.

just tried Cloning a disk with acronis, no luck. but it was out of a desktop model drive, and i put it on a laptop, coulda been a bad driver.

i know u said you used acronis, but i didnt know if you tried the clone feature.

You might be able to get it to work if your image is of the ENTIRE drive and not just the windows partition. This is actually our next test before we try to completely recreate the functionality on a new clean drive. If so, then once you re-image the blank drive you might be able to run DSRFix to fix the CTRL+F10, but this is just a guess as I have not worked on a e510 ever.

Good Luck though.

Just to be clear, we are not providing custom images with this project. This is just a solution so that us owners can create our own images to use on the go with the CTRL+F11 functionality in case of windows crashes.

Providing custom images with all software installed such as the entire Office Suite and Adobe Suite along with the Visual Studio.Net 2005 suite would be illegal and a very LARGE file.

Sorry if anyone was confused by this.

Thanks for all the input folks.

I believe the problem is with Symantec vs. Acronis images. THe pointers in the acronis images are not compatible with the symantec versions of the .gho files. THe System Restore feature DELL uses is a stripped down version of Ghost.

THis is what i have come up with but I have not done extensive research into it. If you find out a way to get Acronis TI to work please let us know and PM me as well. that would be a bonus for alot of folks i imagine.

yea. i just bought acronis for the usb key "makeability"

if you get to being able to restore HD to factory somehow, id be very interested.

otherwise, ill just wait till my next dell is bought, sometime this year.

this is excellent work, congrats.

No worries PCgeek, I know that.. just didnt express myself properly. I found Ghost 9 and ordered it. I'm hoping to try it out soon. Usually reformat every few months so having a custom image ready will be great.

i believe ghost 9 wont work, ghost 9 creates .V2i files which will not work for making the the restore image with our dells.

correct me if i am wrong here but Ghost 9 is the 2005 version and you will need the 2003 (vers 8) or older to create the .gho files.

sorry brudda.

Ghost Corp v8.3 updated late last year is a good substitute for the older Ghost 2003...

that it is... I use ghost corp myself, but ShadowGES and myself thought it would be better for the masses to include the 2003 user class variant for the project tutorial.

Thanks for the screenie.

Hi there,

This way to restore the Ctrl+f11 function works with a total repartitioning of a HD?

By mistake (as my wife said: "you have to read the manual" (yes, sure!!!! )) I erase the restore partition ... i´m trying to restore this funcionality but with my new winXP MEC (Totally new fresh install)

There is a way to:

1)Using partitioning software "liberate" the space where dell use to put his restore partition

2)Create a new Gosth2003 or corporate 8.3 backup

3)Restore the Ctrl+f11 function

4)And (sorry if it´s much to ask) restore the MediaDirect function using as little space as possible

Thanks in advance for all, and sorry for my poor english (not my first language)

Great work. Way over my head as to how you did it. Barely understand what you did.
I just blew money on the latest Ghost, and now I save the restoration onto my USB HDD.

I would like to know how to make those bootable DVDs that V.B. is talking about.
(Yeah, I'm THAT lame that I dunno! )


The other thing is that I've upgraded my HDD twice now, finally to a 120GB HDD, (yayee!), but I sloppily lost the Dell diognostics partition.
Actually, I do have it still on the old HDD.
Do I need to have Partition Magic, etc, to put that on my present HDD as a bootable partition? (I/m assuming, "Yes.")

I tried to make a bootable disk following several different directions, and I can't seem to do itcorrectly.
-So I'm excited to see what you guys do with that.

Here's a page that may help... Lots of good info.

http://radified.com/Articles/laptop.htm
http://ghost.radified.com/

Appears the last "good" version of GHOST was version 2003 / 8.3 -... Or the Corporate version of 8.3 updated in 2005 ....


Got a question.... Would anyone here know if the HP's use a stripped down version of GHOST as the basis of their "recovery" app?

I'm wondering if a stripped down version of GHOST 2003 , v 8.3 would apply to HP laptops as well. Bought a HP Pavilion dv8000t due to a good deal thru www.costco.com
Next laptop may be a DELL... depends on the pricing, options.... (In other words don't hate me for buying an HP.)

I just got thru installing XP PRO +apps, used Arconis to make a recovery partition on the hd via their recovery manager.... a prompt comes up just before the XP OS loads saying to press F11 to run the recovery process... Haven't tried it... but it appears it "should" work.

Press F11 appears on every boot.... and given the choice I'd rather not this message appear...

Would be nice to know if HP uses a stripped down version of GHOST as Arconis "adds", or added some info to the MBR

Given the choice.... I would prefer to not have something added to the bootsector..

Anyone?

Are you serious?

1) Install Ghost 2003 (don't register it - more later[1])
2) install Nero Ultra, or your favorite DVD burning software. It needs to specify that it can make bootable DVDs/CDs. Things like Easy CD Creator Basic don't have the option.
3) Run Ghost. Go to the Ghost Utitities, select Norton Ghost Boot Wizard. Then select "CD/DVD Startup Disk With Ghost". Insert a blank floppy - make the diskette
4) Run Nero -> select the bootable DVD option -> select the 1st two Ghost image files (the GHO and the 1st GHS) -> specify the source of the bootable image (drive A: ) -> and burn the disc.
5) For any remaining GHS files, you just burn them 2-at-a-time to DVDs (they don't need to be booable).

[1] Step 3 works best if you install Ghost on a Desktop. If you have a floppy drive for your notebook then you're all set.

I have never done step 3. What I did in place of step 3 is:
A) make a bootable Floppy.
B) Create the following Autoexec.bat on the floppy:
C) Create the following Config.sys on the floppy:
D) Add these programs to the floppy:
MOUSE.COM
MSCDEX.EXE
OAKCDROM.SYS

E) Add program: C:\Program Files\Norton Ghost 2003\ghost.exe to the floppy (your path on the C: drive may be different)

Then I take a 128MB USB memory stick and format it with a utility to make it bootable. Then I copy these file from the floppy to the USB stick:
AUTOEXEC.BAT
CONFIG.SYS
MOUSE.COM
MSCDEX.EXE
OAKCDROM.SYS
GHOST.EXE

Then instead of using my desktop PC and the floppy for step 4, I use the bootable USB memory stick as the source of the boot image and burn DVDs from my notebook.


Stu - Please rewrite (as needed) and FAQ this.