Hi all,
Wanted to do a factory restore on an Alienware X51 because the recovery partition seems to be corrupted. I can't use respawn because the machine only works in safe mode. During a chat with Dell I bought a restore USB drive, and I can't get the machine to boot to the USB drive. I have tried F12 while booting (as in the instructions included) but I do not get the "USB Storage" option. I have tried setting the BIOS to boot to USB but the option does not appear in the list (http://i.imgur.com/jV3sgWu.jpg). The drive is recognized in explorer (http://i.imgur.com/4IIjSBU.png). I have tried all the USB ports on the machine just for kicks. I don't know what I'm missing here, I did make a point of asking in chat if this drive will really boot and was assured that it would.
I have also tried simply booting to a known good Win7 install DVD and it would not, then found that the machine will not boot to any optical boot disk I have except GParted. (Tried a few other Linux boot disks to no avail.)
FWIW I tried getting back into chat at www.dell.com/support/incidents/us/en/19/Chat/Chattagentry but it is not an available option anymore for me it seems.
I'm out $40 for the restore USB key, not willing to pay more just to get this thing back to factory. I'm no guru but I've restored a few computers over the years and this one is turning into a real bear.
Thanks for any help,
Joe