HELP! - My laptop is now a Paper Weight

Looking at your disk management screenshot, I think I would want to set back to AHCI, do a full clean install, reinstall programs, do all windows settings - then make a new system image - which can be kept as a "factory restore" image. Then re-add your files. A pain but then you have a good image. Unless @zbook can help you sort out the partitions .........

Reginald_Turnip said:

What a collosal pain in the ***

So I THINK I'm successful, not sure yet. When system image was finally done and computer restarted, I got the following screen (which did NOT restart automatically)


View attachment 155093

So I decided to experiment, and went into bios, and changed back to RAID mode, and now it works lol. I don't even want to know why I had to change from RAID to AHCI in order to access the system image and recover from it, but then had to switch back to RAID. Is that a DELL-specific thing?

Please assess the following (disk management readout). Tell me if it looks normal or not. I also just ran sfc /scannow and it found no integrity violations. THANKS EVERYONE for all the input, suggestions.
I'll never play around with "safe mode" boot ever again lol.

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Dell Hard Drive mode by Default is always RAID, instead of AHCI, even if you only have one drive, we don't know why.
You don't need two Recovery Partitions, but this is fine and you can leave it this way thee is no harm

Hazel123 said:

Would it make a difference if he booted from a recovery drive made on the machine, rather than a windows install usb? I've wondered if the recovery drive contains more from Win PE?

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The last time I looked which was a while ago the recovery drive thing uses winre.wim. It depends if that has the drivers added already

The Recovery Partition is used to Restore your computer from inside Windows (ie) Settings/System/Recovery.
You cannot boot from it.

You can leave the partitions the way they are

if you need to clean it up
Press the Windows key +X and choose Terminal (Admin) Type
reagentc /info
This will tell you what recovery partition is needed.
you then can delete the recovery partitions that are not needed. Be sure to do an Image Backup of your computer before attempting.

But how did an extra recovery partition get there in the first place? That's what I'm wondering. Maybe I'm OCD but I'd want to do a clean install and a new image! However, at least backup all drivers installed before doing that (if deciding to).

Double driver is easy to use.


Also make a recovery usb - type "Recovery Drive" in the search box - you might need to run as administrator. It makes a recovery drive which contains the environment for and "might" contain the Windows PE drivers for restoring from a Windows Image Backup in future (in case they start deprecating them in a Windows usb install (if they haven't already). The recovery drive will always work on that particular computer for restoring an image or going into recovery tools area. I did look into this a bit recently and I think there are more options in the recovery drive. With a recovery drive, you don't need to boot a windows 11 usb.

@Hazel123 I suspect the OP did not do a Clean install.
He left the partitions the way they were and just formatted the C: partition and installed Windows to that.
The computer is working. Techies will want to clean it up, but for a Noobie, this is a Win.

SIW2 said:

Quick and easy with 7-zip

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View attachment 155120

Drag the pedrivers folder onto the 7-zip window with the mouse

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7-zip packs it into the wim in a couple of seconds and
like magic


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SIW2 said:

Click down to \windows\system32

and drag in the other 2 files winpeshl.ini and startnet.cmd

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job done in a few seconds

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I have just tested the above and it works the drivers and inf file are there even though there are no matching devices because I havent got a machine that needs them