Dell laptop won't boot after HD format

[fustrun]

Hey!

I am a technician working in a retail store and i have had a few clients that have formatted their hard drives including the recovery partitions and Manufacturer dedicated partitions, basically the whole drive.

Now in the new models of dell laptops if you erase Dell's partitions that came with the PC from the drive it just refuses to boot saying an OS image is not valid or something.

Is there any solution for this? or a place to download factory CD images of a specific model?

Thank you!

 

[Barty1884]

I believe there's a BIOS setting with certain Dells (and maybe others) that require a specific Dell OS image - although I believe it can be disabled. It's called something like "authentication" or similar.

As for factory images for a specific model.... I don't believe they're readily available for download. Dell can provide recovery disks with their specific image/authentication - but they're not specific to a model/series AFAIK. Once you get one Dell image, it should work on all (of the same version, x86, x64, Home, Pro etc).

 

[ss202sl]

secure boot?
http/www.windowsecurity.com/articles-tutorials/misc_network_security/Secure-Boot-Controversy-What-does-mean-IT.html

 

[Barty1884]

^^ I think Dells (specifically) have a secondary setting in addition to secure boot, but it;s worth disabling and checking that out.

 

[fustrun]

^^ I think Dells (specifically) have a secondary setting in addition to secure boot, but it;s worth disabling and checking that out.

I indeed played with the BIOS settings and one of them solved the issue!
Thanks!

 

[rgd1101]

^^ I think Dells (specifically) have a secondary setting in addition to secure boot, but it;s worth disabling and checking that out.

I indeed played with the BIOS settings and one of them solved the issue!
Thanks!

What did you change? might be helpful for others.

 

[fustrun]

I already released the laptop back to the customer, i do belive it's something with "Authentication".