Download recovery partition

[Dave from Lincoln]

I ended up calling Dell and very patiently let them walk me through booting to get to BIOS and running diagnostics and trying to refresh and/or reset my machine. Of course, I had already tried all of this and knew that it would not work, but I do know enough about how support desks work to know that the best thing to do is play along for this. So that took about 30 minutes, and after none of that worked they agreed to send me a recovery image and a cable. I got the image via FedEx in a couple of days. I think the cable is back ordered and I still have not gotten that, but I had already picked up a cable at Best Buy. The recovery worked fine, but it did still create that recovery partition and leave my tablet without enough space to complete the windows 10 upgrade. The solution for that is to have an SD card with at least 8 or 9 GB available. When Win10 upgrade sees there is not enough space on C drive it will let you choose an alternate device, and you can use the SD for that. So, once you restore 8.1 using their recovery image, insert your SD card and plug in the tablet before starting the Win10 upgrade.

I had also tried the xandros9 image, but could not get it to work. I don't know exactly what is different on xandros' recovery as compared to the Dell one; by the time I got everything working I did not have the energy to do the comparison - I was just happy to be done. I still appreciate xandros going to so much trouble to make it available and I am sure it has saved some other folks.

So, get an OTG, get the restore image from Dell, and set aside a block of time and you'll be in business. Good luck!

 

[DCHFoundations]

Dave,

Do you have a direct link to Dell to request this Recovery?

I already have the Dell branded OTG cable allowing simultaneous power and USB.

Thanks!

 

[DCHFoundations]

So I've tried both Memitim's and Xandros' downloads and I cannot for the life of me get this tablet to boot from the USB. I've changed the UEFI order to start with the USB and every time it goes right back into Window 10's recovery options.

Just wondering if Dave's image might work? What is it about the Dell USB that is different than what I have?

I also tried contacting Dell but since this device is out of warranty and I purchased it from a 3rd party, Dell is giving me the big middle finger.

 

[xandros9]

So I've tried both Memitim's and Xandros' downloads and I cannot for the life of me get this tablet to boot from the USB. I've changed the UEFI order to start with the USB and every time it goes right back into Window 10's recovery options.

Just wondering if Dave's image might work? What is it about the Dell USB that is different than what I have?

I also tried contacting Dell but since this device is out of warranty and I purchased it from a 3rd party, Dell is giving me the big middle finger.

I dont think you boot from the USB, you have it connected and initiate a reset from the recovery options,

 

[DCHFoundations]

I dont think you boot from the USB, you have it connected and initiate a reset from the recovery options,

I had that option pulled up but it could never find your recovery image from the USB.

EDIT:

I am able to get the machine to boot into the recovery using your image, Xandros. Once in recovery, I try to use the RESET option but it states the required partition is missing (no surprise since I used diskpart to wipe the eMMC clean after reading another thread stating that Windows 10 needed to be completely off the system before attempting to install a lower sequence OS).

Not sure what steps I need to do in order to get your image onto the eMMC as a recovery partition to load Windows 8.1 from that? Can I use diskpart to somehow move your image from the USB onto the eMMC? Do I use your image to boot into recovery THEN pull out the USB and put Memitm's .img file on it an try to use system re-image?

Thankfully this thing was very inexpensive or I'd be much more upset about having a paperweight.

And thank you to all those posting solutions. It's been informative if nothing else.

 

[Dave from Lincoln]

Hey DCH, the number I called for Dell Tablet support is 1-800-308-3355. Give them a call and play the game where they walk you through crashing your machine intentionally 2 or 3 times until you get the BIOS screen (or just pretend to do that and play a few games of solitaire before you tell them you are finally at BIOS), run diagnostics when they tell you to do that (or pretend to run diags, you know it is not really a hw issue), etc. They will eventually conclude that you need recovery media and will agree to send it to you. It will still be a USB, so you will need to boot from the USB. What I found is that you have to get yourself to BIOS and change the boot order, save and exit, and it will boot from USB just that time. It doesn't seem to be a sticky setting for some reason.

I never did compare what is on their recovery to xandros'. I will try to do that tomorrow; afraid if I start to look at that right now I will get into it and look up again at 2am or something.

Ah hell, I just read what you said again re: out of warranty. I will try to produce a multipart RAR the way xandros did, but not tonight. Will try to do it tomorrow though.

 

[DCHFoundations]

I would absolutely LOVE your USB image, Dave. DropBox, Google Drive?

I FINALLY got this thing semi-running but since I used an Enterprise edition of 8.1, I cannot activate it properly.

I did read somewhere that the recovery images that Xandros and Memitim posted are just the backup system blah blah blah but DO NOT contain the operating system so I wasn't able to use either of those images until I had an actual OS on the device. Once I did (which was an exercise in extreme patience) I was able to recover no problem.

Until I can get an actual version of 8.1 that originally shipped with this tablet, I think I'll be lost in the Need to Activate swamp. I do have access through school to download 8.1 Pro and wonder if that will work?

 

[Dave from Lincoln]

I have uploaded the Dell recovery USB image and made it available here: https://copy.com/YWeXbdGg44Yb4fZ4

(Sorry you'll have to cut-n-paste that URL, I didn't realize I have to have 10 posts on the forum before I'm allowed to post a hyperlink)

It is quite a bit larger than the Xandros9 image - it is 66 parts, 100MB apiece. Hopefully this will be helpful for others, it did the trick for me. This restored my machine to factory fresh Windows 8.1 and it still left me without enough space to upgrade to Windows 10, but once I had a working machine all I had to do was make sure I had an SD card with sufficient space to do the Windows 10 upgrade.

Good luck, and let me know if this is helpful.

 

[DCHFoundations]

HOLY MOTHER OF PEARL!!!!

Ok, so here's how I FINALLY got my tablet back to Windows 8.1 after completely borking my device:

• I started by using Microsoft's downloader to download 8.1 32bit and save in ISO format
• I used an app called Rufus to make the ISO into a bootable USB drive.
• I then used NTLite to inject Dell's drivers into the USB in order to have the touchscreen and wireless working when installing.
• I then booted the machine from the USB.
• Windows installed and I DON'T have the activation nag!
• I then used Xandros' recovery to reset the machine back to original condition.

Granted, this was a lot of research and a bit new for this Mac user so I definitely learned a bunch.

I will provide the links I used to anyone who needs a bit of guidance on how the hell to reformat this little bugger of a machine.

 

[Dave from Lincoln]

Nice work, DCH! I am impressed.

 

[Velino_70]

Dear all,
I am been browsing this forum for some time in search for a solution to one problem with my DV8P.

To keep it short, I upgraded to Windows 10 but this seemed to remove my factory recovery partition. Subsequently I experienced a number of problems (including store frozen and mobile network not working) so I decided to downgrade to Windows 8.1 which at this point I was unable to perform.

I am now trying to perform the recovery procedure described in this thread, I have the Windows 8.1 Enterprise Evaluation installed and I am trying to recover using the Xandros recovery image. The problem is that I can in no way start the recovery. I am trying with the following sequence of commands (having inserted USB key in my hub):

advanced startup >> troubleshoot >> advanced options >> system image recovery

The USB key is correctly read by the DV8P but the recovery system image is not detected.

I would be very, very grateful if somebody could explain me in detail how to perform the last step of this recovery procedure, at this point I'm stuck. Thank you very much in advance for your help.

Best regards

 

[DCHFoundations]

Dear all,

I would be very, very grateful if somebody could explain me in detail how to perform the last step of this recovery procedure, at this point I'm stuck. Thank you very much in advance for your help.

Once you have Enterprise edition installed, you need to boot from your USB using the BIOS screen as opposed to the recovery screen in Windows. Power down, then hold vol - while pressing power until the Dell logo comes up.

Once in your BIOS, you need to change the boot option 1 to look at your USB instead of the Windows loader. At this point when you exit (ESC) you should be booting from the USB recovery image.

The screen should ask you about which language you want to use, then go into the usual recovery options. You want to select Troubleshoot>Reset and then follow the prompts.

Once it boots back into Windows, you should have all the original Dell apps and such from Xandros recovery.

I will say that the method you are trying isn't the best since the Enterprise Edition will NOT let you activate your copy of Windows. I suggest you either download Dave's image or follow the steps I did. Granted, my method assumes you are a glutton for punishment.

 

[WINO0314]

Will WinRAR put the files you uploaded back into a complete file? I'm not too versed on that program.

 

[Velino_70]

Dear DCHFoundations,
thank you for your detailed procedure, I managed to recover using the Xandros'image.

Now I need to re-activate the Windows 8, I suppose this is because the recovery image is from a US device whereas mine was bought in Germany. I read on another thread that it would have worked if I had properly set the country configurations to the original ones but up to date it has not worked, I contine exprimenting...

Bye

 

[DCHFoundations]

Dear DCHFoundations,
I contine exprimenting...

One thing I noticed is that the recoveries that Xandros and Memitim posted have all the Dell stuff in them so if you DON'T need all the Dell crap (which you can reinstall from the driver download page on their site anyways) then I'd just reformat using a Windows 8.1 ISO.

The recoveries DO have all the drivers and whatnot but I assume you'd be going to the Dell site anyway to update them so why not do a clean install instead?

 

[Velino_70]

One thing I noticed is that the recoveries that Xandros and Memitim posted have all the Dell stuff in them so if you DON'T need all the Dell crap (which you can reinstall from the driver download page on their site anyways) then I'd just reformat using a Windows 8.1 ISO.

The recoveries DO have all the drivers and whatnot but I assume you'd be going to the Dell site anyway to update them so why not do a clean install instead?

It's a long story... I upgraded to Windows 10 keeping data and applications. Everything worked fine but the Store which despite trying some workarounds reported on the net refused to work. At this point I performed a clean Windows 10 install, applied all the drivers from the Dell site, everything worked fine including the store apart from the 3g which refused to work... so I decided to revert to the last working configuration which was factory 8.0 upgraded to 8.1, but Windows 10 had removed my recovery partition (no mention of this in the nice Microsoft presentation of the new OS features). I hope to work around this problem, I am quite disappointed from this situation. I hope to activate the recovery image from xandros and establish again a working configuration... thanks again.

 

[WINO0314]

I couldn't get that image to work as it reported that it was corrupted. I never did go back and try to download it again.

 

[axllebeer]

I'm about to give this a go. Thank you so much for hosting this solution!

Posted from my Q10 via the power of "Q"

Start downloading the 43 files from here: https://mega.co.nz/#F!FARQgQCC!MVeKesUeds30EuSTrMsYpQ

​Will post the rest of the instructions tomorrow when I'm sober.

 

[axllebeer]

This little adapter is great. It works on everything that supports USB OTG. Including my Nexus 7 2013. A must have.

Posted from my Q10 via the power of "Q"

You can request a free USB drive with the recovery stuff from Dell. But, you won't be able to boot from it without this adapter, which allows charging and USB at the same time:

Dell Micro USB Dongle for Data and Charging : Tablets & Mobile Accessories | Dell

 

[Geodude074]

This little adapter is great. It works on everything that supports USB OTG. Including my Nexus 7 2013. A must have.

Posted from my Q10 via the power of "Q"

If you don't want to use an adapter, I suggest simply using a microSD card. I bought an 8 GB microSD from Amazon for about $5 and put the recovery partition on it. Works great, now I have a permanent backup of the recovery partition on an external memory card that only cost $5.