The AlienRespawn app is now available. Run the app and it will give you the immediate option of creating either boot DVD disks or a USB boot disk. I went the USB boot disk route. You will need something larger than 6 GB or so – so about an 8 GB USB thumb drive is perfect for this. The AlienRespawn app actually puts all the recovery files from your recovery partition on the USB drive – so that is all we want to deal with.
Took about 10 minutes to create the boot drive. For my purposes, now reboot the machine, press F12 and choose the USB drive to boot from. And we get options to restore our system from the Hard drive (last full backup) or from the USB drive. If you’re trying to recover an image that you’d saved before, use the hard drive. In OUR case, we want to use the USB restore path and was instructed to let it reboot.
After a quick reboot, we have a few more notable choices to get to the original system recovery install – this part I did pretty quick, but you should be able to figure it out if you’re trying to follow this to restore your OWN Alienware M11X-R2 laptop…
- Other System Backup & more options
- Factory Recovery
- Restore without preserving new or changed files
And… let it rip. About 20 minutes later, we have a nice, fresh from the factory, clean install. Oh yeah. Sexy.
I need one of those Aliens.
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July 3, 2012
Thank you! Your instructions worked great.
July 3, 2012
Thank you! Your instructions worked great.
February 19, 2013
I have an Alienware M11X R-1, I restored to factory settings and I have no recovery cd! Now when I start it up I get a blue screen telling me I need to fun the repair and fix, I do it doesn’t find a problem but will not start up! Please if you can help me I really would appreciate it!
February 26, 2013
Kim – hate to hear it. Have you tried starting in Safe Mode? Press on boot -see if that will let you in. there may be a driver conflict. There SHOULDN’T be but if the graphics card has been replaced or other misc things, it could be causing an issue.
And as much as I do hate to say it, if all else fails, do take it to a local computer tech. The Alien is a great little machine. Mine is still running great but it is a bit long in the tooth. Repairs even from a scratch install should be less than $200. We would likely do it in the 145ish range.