How to repair Dell boot record to access restore partition.
- July 3rd, 2010
- Posted in Documentation
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The boot record on a Dell E310 was modified over time as a result of various system updates. I was unable to access the restore partition, when the OS needed to be restored, using Ctrl-F11 at the BIOS boot screen. To restore the boot record so that I could use Ctrl-F11, I created a bootable DOS CD using the fdfullcd.iso from the FreeDOS site (http://www.freedos.org/). Then, I created another CD with the dsrfix.exe (http://www.goodells.net/dellrestore/files/dsrfix.zip) utility on it. I unzipped the dsrfix.zip file and burn the contents of the zip file onto a CD.
From here, I booted the FreeDOS CD. Then, I removed the FreeDOS CD and put in the dsrfix CD. I ran mscdex.exe at this point. However, I do not believe that was necessary. Then, I switched to the E: drive and ran dsrfix. I had an alert on pbr descriptor 3. Next, I ran dsrfix /F. This repaired the record so that Ctrl-F11 worked. Thanks to Dan Goodell (http://www.goodells.net/dellrestore/). According to Dan’s site, his utility has been tested on the following Dell systems: Dimension 1100, 2400, 3000, 3100, 4550, 4600, 4700, 5000, 5100, 5150, 8200, 8300, 8400, 9100, 9150, B110, E310, E510, E520, E521, XPS 400, XPS 410, XPS 720, XPS Gen 4. Inspiron 500m, 510m, 600m, 630m, 640m, 700m, 1150, 1200, 1300, 1501(AMD), 2200, 5100, 5150, 6000, 6400, 8600, 9300, 9400, B120, B130, E1405, E1505, E1705, M710, M1210, XPS, XPS Gen 2, XPS M1710. Vostro 200.
Jim, thanks a TON for this! I had to fix the MBR on a friend’s PC (boot sector virus!) and the tool I used overwrote the Dell MBR. After a frustrating go-round with Dell I found this… Thanks a TON!! If you’re ever in the Raleigh NC area I owe you a few beers 😉
No problem. That is why I put the information out there.
Hi. I am having a problem restoring the F 11 on a dell dimension 3000. I ran the DSR fix with my problem remaining. When you ran MSCDEX, what does that do?
Thanks
@Meredith Booker
When running MSCDEX, you should see some output stating is had loaded and then detected your CD-ROM by displaying the logical drive letter assigned.
Thank you very much.
worked like a charm.
great tutorial
and again
Thank you !
Thank you for your post.. this fix worked for me.. now i have access to the recovery partition.. thank you loads!!! 🙂
Holy carp. thank you for this. i’ve been trying to do this for a few days now. This has worked for me. Before this, I couldn’t even get an install disk to boot without freezing. Now I can get the recovery partition and go about as business as usual. And my client doesn’t have to use a formerly infected OS that was probably turned into swiss cheese.
@RH
“Holy carp” Glad it helped you out.
Nice, saved me a ton of time. Tyvm.