Monday, May 30, 2011

Applying a WIM image using ImageX

Was trying to restore my Inspiron 1520 to its factory default settings and PCRestore.exe was not working. But what I did find on the restore partition was a WIM image. So here is how I got the restore running

What you need: ImageX.exe (should be in the tools folder of the restore partition)

  1. Boot up into Repair mode.
    1. Restart your computer and hit F8 while the computer is starting.
  2. Choose the Repair option or the safe-mode command prompt.
  3. If you chose the repair option, in the “System Recovery Options” dialog, select Command Prompt
  4. Navigate to the restore partition (normally drive D).
  5. CD into the Tools folder.
  6. Run the following ImageX command:
    ImageX /apply d:\dell\image\factory.wim 1 c:\
    The above command applies the image to the drive c.
  7. If everything works correctly, you should see some messaging that the process has started. It took ImageX about 5 minutes before it started the restore process (during this time, it almost looks as though nothing is happening).
  8. After a while you should begin see Progress messages (Progress: x%, Y minutes remaining).
  9. The restore process took about 20 minutes on my laptop.
  10. Reboot and you should be booting up into a factory restored version of your laptop.

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