Hi,
This is the scenario that happened to me. After couple of hours I managed to overcome the problem, but it took too much time. So I thought I share my scenario and things I did, as on the way to success I met several issues that are commonly known, at least according to questions can be found on forums.
For those who need urgent help, first let me present step by step solution that worked for me:
0. If you're in the same situation and you have to move your recover partition to a new drive first, you can easily do this using this free tool: Paragon Backup & Recovery. Works from Windows level.
1. Download Imagex.exe tool from this link: http://support.microsoft.com/hotfix/KBHotfix.aspx?kbnum=2525084&kbln=en-us or by googling for 'KB2525084-v2' hotfix. Choose x86 for 32bit procs or amd64 if you have 64bits one - this is very important.
2. Copy the Imagex.exe file to a pen-drive. Mine was bootable, but I'm not sure if it has to be...
3. Format partition designated for the system. From now on let's assume it is C:
4. Boot the machine from windows installation disk or any other way you prefer to access your pen-drive in DOS
5. Changed dir to the one containing Imagex on your stick
6. Run this command: "imagex /apply d:\dell\image\factory.wim 1 c:\" - where D is your partition recovery.
7. Reboot pc. If system starts, that's great. If you see "Bootmgr is missing" message - keep reading
8. Make sure C: partition is the active one.
9. I'm not advanced in bootsectors etc. and probably you may have different case and some of the below commands are not needed, but they did the job for me. I was restarting pc after each point and after C. it was working.
A. bootrec /rebuildbcd
bootrec /fixMbr
bootrec /fixBoot
B. C:\boot\bootsect /nt60 C: /force
C. bcdboot c:\windows /s c:
10. Hopefully, enjoy fresh system :)
For those who like reading - same solution but with more details:
If you have a recovery partition without Tools folder with executables provided by Dell to restore the system, you do a quick googling and you know that all you need is:
imagex /apply d:\dell\image\factory.wim 1 c:\
where D is your partition recovery and C partition designated to be the system one. [Imagex] is a tool you can get with Windows Automated Installation Kit as everyone says but the better way is to ask Microsoft to send you link to it so this way you will need to download 0,5MB instead of 1,5GB and burn or install nothing. I've requested it here:
http://support.microsoft.com/hotfix/KBHotfix.aspx?kbnum=2525084&kbln=en-us
but if this link is not working for you try to google this:
KB2525084-v2
that's the name of the hot-fix you will get a link to. Once you get it unzip and then extract the imagex.exe file from .cab file. Now, you can start restoring your recovery with command
imagex /apply d:\dell\image\factory.wim 1 c:\
from Windows level, if it's working, run cmd.exe with administrator priv. navigate to folder containing Imagex.exe, paste the command and go. If you're lucky it will work and you're happy. It won't for me. Firstly because I was running the command on Imagex.exe that I got from WAIK/Tools/x86 dir. Why did I do so knowing that I have x64? Cause Internet told me that, and other options I had were ia64 which is AFAIK for Itanium processors and amd64 which is likely for AMD processors so these looked like no options for my i7 processor.
So what I got running above command on x86 imagex.exe was the ERROR something like:
[ERROR] C:\Windows\System32\drivers\1028_Dell*********.mrk <Error = 5>
Error restoring image.
Access is denied.
Googling, googling, checking some possible solutions with permissions etc. and got nothing.
So I gave a try the same command but using the command line you can access if you boot a pc with an installation disk, then choose [Repair system] option. Guess what, it did not even started. Message:
The subsystem needed to support the image type is not present....
... or something like that. Back to Google and no solution found again.
Got back to Windows command line and I thought that why not to give a try this imagex.exe from amd64...? So I did and it worked. The restoring started and although I had a feeling that it not gonna reach 100% I hoped it would.... but it didn't. It stopped at about 20% of the way with a message:
cannot copy bla_bla_blaaaa_AMD_blablaaaalba_AMD.....
"OK, of course it cannot do something about the AMD couse I do not have this processor, so the windows on recovery something that imagex designated for amd64 wants...." - first quick thought in my head and I believed that.
Ok, so then I started googling for Imagex.exe for x64 and I found a link for this hotfix I've mentioned at the very beging. Great, so now I had the tool for x64 and what's more it's a hotfix. Enthusiasm was back in house. Download, extract, run and it's working! ....till the 20%, again with a message about the AMD...... Wait a minute..... so amd64 imagex was ok too probably.... and probably it's the same as what I got from MS site.... Never mind. I tried to delete the ....AMD.... files from Windows dir, but i couldn't so I formatted the C partition. Then finally, running the imagex.... command worked in 100%. But after restarting the machine another problem:
Bootmgr is missing
If you google on that one, you'll be probably advised to do this:
bootrec /rebuildbcd
bootrec /fixMbr
bootrec /fixBoot
It made a difference (from now on I was able to see Windows installation in 'Repair' window) but it did not solve the problem. So next I gave a try to this one:
C:\boot\bootsect /nt60 C: /force
I could remember that one helped already in the past, but not this time. Still problem was not solved. So next I started playing with bcdedit.exe tool. Thanks to it I noticed that my DCD doesn't look like the examples from the Internet, so I was just about to start creating it from scratch with this tutorial:
http://www.windowsitpro.com/article/windows-power-tools/build-bootable-bcd-scratch-bcdedit-136066
when I decided to do a quick try to this command:
bcdboot c:\windows /s c:
which I have found somewhere else. After executing this command I checked the BCD again using bcdedit.exe and then it looked promising. Restarted machine and finally it was working. I did restore the system from recovery :)
Hope that helps,
K.