Repairing Dell Utility Partition

[Spools]

I'm working with some donated Dell computers that didn't come with repair disks. There is some confusion about whether they were supposed to have an OS when we received them but they do have their PoL/CoA stickers.

I assumed I would have to run the Dell repair utility from the hidden partition to reinstall XP Pro. To my surprise, XP was installed (fresh it appears) but the utility partition seems to have been wiped (pressing f12 at POST gives the message that the utility is not available).

These computers will be donated to low income families after a 5 night program that gets them familiar with PCs. Typically we show them how to install the OS on an empty drive with Win2000 but this batch of Dells put us in a different spot. We could show them how to reinstall XP from the utility partitions but, alas, they're empty.

I have a XP Pro Dell repair disk that I could copy for them, if you think that might work but I was wondering if it's possible to copy that repair disk to the empty utility partition? Any other suggestions?

[glc]

What are the build dates of these Dells? If they were built after 7/04 they came with 3 partitions. The first partition is about 32mb, and it's a diagnostic partition. The second is the main partition, and the 3rd is a recovery partition, usually about 4gb. To reinstall with one of those, you press Ctrl+F11 at startup.

If they are built before then, you need to look in the root of the C drive, showing hidden and system files/folders. There should be a few files beginning with "zz", and the one that reinstalls the image is "zztop.bat".

If you have a XP Pro Dell reinstall disk, you can use that, it will install XP without requiring a key or activation as long as it sees a Dell bios. This is legal as long as the CoA is for XP Pro. If you are going to do that, I'd recommend you zero fill the drive first. It will install in exactly the same way as with a generic XP CD on any other computer. You will also need to download the needed drivers and burn them to CD's, unless you have the Dell Resource CD for that computer. If you want them to have any kind of productivity software, you will have to dig something up, I'd recommend Open Office to avoid any kind of expense or licensing hassles.

The Resource CD is bootable, and has the same diagnostics that are preloaded in the diagnostic partition.