Restore Dell Inspiron Mini to Factory Settings

Restoring the Dell Inspiron Mini to factory settings is very easy providing you use an external CD/DVD ROM drive connected to its USB port. Almost any CD/DVD ROM drive capable of connecting and communicating through the USB port will work, and you do not need any special drivers for the CD ROM drive for this.

I had lost the Dell System Restore CD for this Mini 1011 so my first call was to Dell to order a new set of restore disks. They took the Asset Tag Number (ASN) as usual and kindly shipped a new set of restore disks consisting of Windows XP SP3 installation CD, and Drivers and Utilities CD. Thanks Mr Dell! With such a helpful attitude, I am always tempted to buy Dell computers.

Connect the USB CD/DVD ROM drive to the USB port of the computer as shown above, and insert the Windows XP installation CD into the drive, and reboot the computer. You need to power the computer from its mains adapter, and not the battery for obvious common sense reasons.

When the computer reboots the Dell logo screen appears, and there is a short period of time in which to press . Just press the F2 button and no other keys. The F2 key is the one with a transmitter icon, just above the number 2 key.

BIOS Setup

When the computer enters the BIOS configuration screen you should see a Factory Restore Dell Inspiron Mini BIOS Screen.

Press the right arrow key to navigate to the 'Boot' menu which will show you the System Restore Dell Inspiron Mini Boot Order screen In the boot menu screen there will be a list of devices and the hard drive will be the first on the list.

Select CD/DVD/CD-RW on the list by first navigating to it using the down arrow and then Enter. Press F6 repeatedly until CD/DVD/CD-RW is listed at the top. Press F10 key to save the new settings and exit the BIOS setup. When CD/DVD/CD-RW is at the top of the list it means that the computer will try to boot from those devices first.

When the computer reboots it will search for a CD/DVD ROM drive connected to its USB port and boot from the Windows XP restore disk.

Installing Windows

Once the computer begins to boot from the drive connected to the USB, just follow the instructions as you normally would when installing Windows XP.

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