Boot to hidden Dell partition?

**pinhead** · August 17th, 2004, 04:21 PM

Anybody remember how to boot to the hidden partition on a Dell Dimension 4400.

Thought it was Ctrl + F11 but that didn't work.

Thanks.

**3fingersalute** · August 17th, 2004, 04:57 PM

I didn't know Dell's had a recovery partition. Are you sure you are not thinking of IBM or Compaq?

**pinhead** · August 17th, 2004, 05:30 PM

I didn't think so either, but one of the other techs here said that he did it last week, but can't remember the shortcut key.

From what I understand, he is trying to reinstall using recovery disks, and it keeps returning the XP code on the sticker as invalid.

I'll make sure tomorrow.

Thanks for the help anyway.

**dc361** · August 18th, 2004, 06:42 AM

If you tap the F12 key at the bios post screen you should be presented with a boot menu.. Select the appropriate choice to boot the recovery/diagnostic partition.

**arch0nmyc0n** · August 18th, 2004, 01:25 PM

in any situation like this I usualy just cycle through f1 f2 f5 f8 f10 f11 f12 Del Space Tab and Enter.... that covers pretty much every key I've seen used to enter BIOS, boot menus and diagnostic partitions.

**NetScum** · August 18th, 2004, 02:39 PM

Originally Posted by 3fingersalute

I didn't know Dell's had a recovery partition. Are you sure you are not thinking of IBM or Compaq?

Dell has a small FAT16 recovery partition that is about 30MB's. All my Inspiron notebooks had them however after receiving them I deleted the entire partition to set it up my way.

DC361's comment on F12 then recovery still works on my Inspirons even though they no longer have the recovery partition so that may be BIOS related option... I recently used Dell's "Drivers Utilities and Applications" CD to do a DIAG on a bad HDD... it was the same DAIG utility that was in the original recovery partition.

HTH