Rolling back to 8.1 on Dell tablet

[tpapictures]

Ok, I don't have a Windows.OLD in my C drive even though I could have sworn I did. Am I out of luck then for getting this tablet back to its France 8.1 OS? What can I check to be absolutely sure it's there because I was so sure I had 'upgraded' and not installed fresh.

Thanks

 

[pankaj981]

Have you tried restoring back to the recovery partition?

 

[tpapictures]

There isn't one. Or it's a 10 partition. I think my first attempt to roll back the tablet wiped out the backup I had made.

 

[Ryan ODonnell]

You'll have to make a Windows installation media USB drive to plug in and make sure its bootable. There's a link on the Microsoft website to create this, but I don't have the link! If you search Bing for "Create installation media for Windows 8.1", you should find a tool which should let you do just that! Its a pain to do on a tablet (the Windows reinstall bit), as touch DOES NOT work initially so have a keyboard, mouse and your tablets drivers ready. If you're on the latest build of Windows 10 (9926 I believe), go to Settings and click "Update and recovery" and then click "Recovery" and you might see an option which says "Roll back to your previous version of Windows".

 

[tpapictures]

You'll have to make a Windows installation media USB drive...

Hey Ryan, thanks. I've already made that USB drive when I found that link last night by searching for answers. Didn't know about the keyboard/mouse thing. However, my concern with this method is that it doesn't give me at all any of the applications that Dell puts on the tablet. the Dell splash screen, nothing. At least, I imagine. Also, I don't get the "roll back" option, sadly.

 

[pankaj981]

Okay I'll detail the steps if someone doesn't respond. I just did that last week and yes, it was a pain. BTW what Dell tablet are you referring to?

 

[tpapictures]

Okay I'll detail the steps if someone doesn't respond. I just did that last week and yes, it was a pain. BTW what Dell tablet are you referring to?

It's the Dell Venue 8 Pro. But, you know, someone else on here has a recovery folder they had that I want to try first. I just have to figure out what to do with it, where to put it.

 

[pankaj981]

It's the Dell Venue 8 Pro. But, you know, someone else on here has a recovery folder they had that I want to try first. I just have to figure out what to do with it, where to put it.

To cut it short (getting late for office), download the recovery from the link (I think it's by forum member xandros9), unzip it and keep it handy in the root of the USB drive. Now put your tablet in recovery mode and from the USB. It should find the files and proceed installing 8.1. My situation was worse since i wasn't able to even get to recovery. I had to create a custom boot drive and then restore. Hopefully it won't be that troublesome for your

 

[tpapictures]

To cut it short (getting late for office)...

Thanks, man. No, I seem to be able to get to recovery just fine. I've put it on a microSD card. I just hope it sees the drive. Thank you!
UPDATE: xandros is helping me in another thread but I can't seem to pick the microSD slot after choosing recovery in the control panel.

 

[Torro Rosso]

You will not be able to run Dell Recovery from an SD card, only USB or mass media devices. I've had the same problem with my DV8P the other day, I installed W10TP and couldn't roll back because it overwrote the recovery partition with its own. Downloading factory image also didn't help as in order for recovery to initiate, you need to have power AC attached as well as the media which means connecting two USB with one port. You need to have the USB power/data splitter to do this.

There is also another method(which I used in the end) - boot any OS from USB/SD/LAN/whatever, then manually recreate everything (not just recovery partition but also system, data, and the fourth one) using diskpart command in CMD. It took me a while typing everything in but I succeeded in restoring the partitions, then I simply pushed the factory Dell image which I downloaded earlier onto the system partition.

 

[tpapictures]

I've had the same problem...

Thanks. I'll look into this. I don't see why the tablet needs to be plugged in though if it's reading from a USB flash drive. It's not like the flash drive takes any power and if the tablet is fully charged, surely there's enough power to go through this whole process. Somebody on another forum linked me to a Dell page that explains how to "reimage" the tablet and I think the purpose is to get it back to stock status.

 

[tpapictures]

To cut it short (getting late for office), download the recovery from the link (I think it's by forum member xandros9), unzip it and keep it handy in the root of the USB drive...

My tablet in Windows 10 won't read from the USB in recovery at all. Doesn't want to give anything as an option but the system drive or an optical drive, I guess it's thinking that it's a desktop or laptop.

 

[pankaj981]

My tablet in Windows 10 won't read from the USB in recovery at all. Doesn't want to give anything as an option but the system drive or an optical drive, I guess it's thinking that it's a desktop or laptop.

Yea it did not work for me too (may be I couldn't figure it out). To mess it up more, I started with vanilla 8.1 and during the process I cleaned up the recovery drives using diskpart which caused "no internal drive found" error. Then I had to download a copy of 8.1 Enterprise, create a bootable disk, install 8.1 then try the recovery from the Dell 8.1 recovery which worked after that. I am not sure if I had to through all if I had a little bit of patience rather than using diskpart to delete the internal drives

 

[Torro Rosso]

My tablet in Windows 10 won't read from the USB in recovery at all. Doesn't want to give anything as an option but the system drive or an optical drive, I guess it's thinking that it's a desktop or laptop.

You have to have the same type of OS on your recovery USB and your RECOVERY partition. Windows 10 TP 'upgraded' your RECOVERY partition to windows 10 so even if you have original Dell Factory Recovery Image it won't work. You need to physically remove all Windows 10 partitions first. What I had to do was:

1. Download Dell factory image from one of the forumers here (thanks a lot dude!).
2. Boot the tablet into cmd using USB (remember, I couldn't boot into Windows 8 installer or recovery because tablet would tell me I had a mismatch between OS and Recovery partition).
3. Use diskpart command to remove all the partitions.
4. Use diskpart command again (following instructions on how to bring back the Dell Venue 8 Pro partitions).
5. Once I had the partitions set up, I pushed the Dell Recovery Image(as a simple .img file, not bootable USB!) using dism command onto the SYSTEM partition.
6. Reboot and go.

 

[tpapictures]

What I had to do was...

So was that basically the same as following these instructions on the Dell site? Sorry if you told me about it already, I'm losing track of who's said what.

 

[pankaj981]

So was that basically the same as following these instructions on the Dell site? Sorry if you told me about it already, I'm losing track of who's said what.

The recovery image you got from the forum member is not a img file but the actual contents so the above method won't work. Also diskpart will mess up your partitions so be careful with using it

 

[Torro Rosso]

Diskpart is used to get rid of the mess after installing W10TP. It replaces your SYSTEM partition with a new one hence you cannot roll back/restore to a previous/last working instance of it. If you manually remove SYSTEM partition with diskpart and then try recovering option, it won't let you, at least it didn't for me. As Pankaj981 said, the img file from Dell is the actual SYSTEM/RECOVERY partition contents so it doesn't work as OS installed, only with Dell Recovery option but if you installed W10TP and want to recover the OS, it will not recognize the img from Dell. You need to push the content somehow onto the partitions (they have to be W8 partitions!). I used diskpart to create all W8 partitions and then DISM command from cmd. DISM allows you to deploy images onto partitions.

 

[tpapictures]

Well, just as an update here if anyone wants to give me a hand...
I got (finally) the USB flash drive and adapter from Dell and tried running them as they suggested and it just brought up an error. The installation of Windows 8.1 for tablets didn't even run. So, I'm really at a loss. Even though the updated version of Windows10 is nice, I'd just like a functioning tablet version of 8.1 back again.
If I go this diskpart route, how do I find out what the Windows 8 partitions were to recreate them?

 

[pankaj981]

Well, just as an update here if anyone wants to give me a hand...
I got (finally) the USB flash drive and adapter from Dell and tried running them as they suggested and it just brought up an error. The installation of Windows 8.1 for tablets didn't even run. So, I'm really at a loss. Even though the updated version of Windows10 is nice, I'd just like a functioning tablet version of 8.1 back again.
If I go this diskpart route, how do I find out what the Windows 8 partitions were to recreate them?

Okay, here is the easy route (I used it to recover my DV8P)

1) Download Windows 8.1 Enterprise evaluation bootable ISO from Microsoft
2) Install it using USB bootable media option
3) After the setup, recover using the Dell Recovery Media/recovery partition contents (posted by xandros9)

 

[tpapictures]

Okay, here is the easy route (I used it to recover my DV8P)
1) Download Windows 8.1 Enterprise evaluation bootable ISO from Microsoft
2) Install it using USB bootable media option
3) After the setup, recover using the Dell Recovery Media/recovery partition contents (posted by xandros9)

Ok, I will try that but Windows 10 doesn't seem to want to accept bootable ISOs regardless of what they contain. But I'll certainly try it. Any idea where I can get that 8.1 evaluation? I have a tablet version on a USB drive sent to me by Microsoft, as I said, so I can try that. Any reason why that would be different from xandros9's files?