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I have an old Dell Dimension 1950. I am trying to do a factory reset. I do not have original disks that came with it....my company was bad about keeping that stuff organized. I tried pressing F11 when booting up as well as F8 and F10. I have done this before on other computers but it is not working for this PC. What are my options if the pre-installed factory reset option is not working?

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Do you know for a fact there is a recovery partition on the hard drive? – CharlieRB Jan 10 at 19:16
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3 Answers

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Reinstall it with windows disc. Then download the missing drivers from Dell website.

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Although your answer is, in essence, correct; the question is asking what to do if they don't have the disks. This was stated in the question. – CharlieRB Jan 10 at 19:15
I'm aware that he do not have Dell's factory CD, what I was saying is to reinstall it with typical Windows CD then download the driver from Dell website. – chmod Jan 11 at 19:11
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If the recovery partition is damaged or deleted and you've lost the restore media, you can request a set of discs from Dell.

https://support.dell.com/support/topics/global.aspx/support/dellcare/en/backupcd_form

Note that if you do a restore with Dell discs, you'll get a Windows system with all the "bloatware." Many people prefer to install a plain version of Windows and install only the necessary hardware drivers.

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I was hoping to avoid reinstalling bloatware. I have a feeling the partition is damaged because about a year ago I was able to do it to another computer of the same model – user72325 Jan 11 at 20:30
Well, if you want to avoid the bloatware, then just re-install from a Windows install disk as mentioned, and only load necessary device drivers. Good time to do BIOS updates, by the way. If your issue is solved, can you accept one of the answers so your question is marked as solved? Thanks! – BeeDee Jan 12 at 4:51
Will do ....thanks – user72325 Jan 16 at 14:26
quick question...how do you determine if the recovery partition is damaged or deleted? – user72325 Jan 16 at 19:35
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