How to Manually Access a Dell Restore Partition (4 Steps)

By C. Taylor

Dell computers can be booted from a recovery partition to restore the system.
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Dell computers ship with a recovery partition from which you can restore your computer to its originally purchased state. This is useful if your computer becomes irreparably damaged. When you recover the system, all your programs, files and documents will be deleted before the computer is recovered, so this should be a last resort. Accessing the recovery partition can be manually invoked while booting the system.

Step 1

Turn on or restart the computer.

Step 2

Press and hold the "Ctrl" key and press "F11" upon seeing the blue bar with "www.dell.com" on it. If you are uncertain when to press, you may continually press the combination without damaging anything. The computer boots from the recovery partition.

Step 3

Click "Restore," and then "Confirm" to restore your Dell computer. Click "Finish" when prompted to do so, and then select "Yes" to reboot.

Step 4

Click "Next" after rebooting, and click "OK" to reboot again. Click "OK" after rebooting to complete recovery.

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