Do Dell recovery disks include drivers and wipe hard drive?

Question

i have recently inhereted a dell inspiron 6000, with a load of junk on it, i want to create some recovery disks, and re-install the system, but i want to make sure of 2 things:
1) will the recovery disks delete everything off the computer?
2) will the revovery disks include all the drivers i need?

Answer 1

Dell Recovery disks include Drivers for your basic hardware, also Recovery of operating system restore as it was originally shipped to you.

Answer 2

It depends, different computer vendors do their recovery discs differently but in general if you create your discs using the recovery software provided to your computer by Dell, then everything should work out. I've used recovery discs to restore a messed up Windows XP on an HP notebook and it worked wonders. During the recovery process, your drive is wiped and your laptop Is returned to its factory state. Windows is restored with a clean slate and all your drivers are intact (no extra driver cds or downloads are generally needed if you use the recovery discs). Any programs that were on your computer when you first bought it are also restored (If you've had programs like Microsoft Word, or any antivirus programs on your computer when you purchased it, they'll be restored after the recovery process).

Answer 3

The Recovery Disks normally wipe the system and install all of the software and drivers that the computer needs to be factory fresh. If there are any added PCI cards you will need to obtain the drivers for them.

Answer 4

Hi, your best bet is to log on to Dell's website and go to their support and troubleshooting page located at

http://support.dell.com/support/topics/global.aspx/support/product_support/en/product_support_central?c=us&clearsystem=true&cs=19&l=en&product_family=Inspiron&s=dhs

from there you can enter the service tag (yes, even though you inherited it) and it will pull up everything it came loaded with drivers and all. (the build sheet)

If the service tag is NOT still attached, no sweat, because you can still enter the model and get to a more generic version with all the drivers etc.

You should reload it with no issues as long as you have access to those drivers. Reinstall/reformat and driver install will take you anywhere from 1.5-3 hours. Have fun!