Truecrypt and Dell Recovery Partition

I used Truecrypt to do a full disk encryption of my C:\ drive.

Now I want boot into the Dell Recovery Partition (Ctrl+F11) to do a full system restore.

However, I can't get into the Dell Recovery Partition (it does exist, and not encrypted - I checked), I am guessing its because Truecrypt modified and encrypted my boot loader. So I used the Truecrypt recovery CD and restored my boot loader to a pre-truecrypt state.

NOTE: Truecrypt asks me to first decrypt my C:\ drive, which I lied and said it's already decrypted, when it's actually not. The reason being that I am going to wipe the entire C:\ anyways, so I don't want to waste time decrypting it.

My question is, how come booting into my Recovery Partition still does not work? Is there something on the C:\ that is required to boot in to the Recovery Partition?

vinhboy

Posted 2011-03-19T18:19:16.417

Reputation: 321

Answers

Decrypt the volume then see this article to possibly recover the custom Dell MBR

http://www.goodells.net/dellrestore/fixes.shtml

main page

http://www.goodells.net/dellrestore/

Moab

Posted 2011-03-19T18:19:16.417

Reputation: 54 203

Turns out it's because I did not hold the F8 key long enough. :(.... But thank you for the background info. – vinhboy – 2011-03-22T17:14:40.867

Oh, F8 is for Vista and W7, ctrl+F11 is for XP systems. The link I posted is only for XP systems. – Moab – 2011-03-23T00:42:15.253

Truecrypt overwrote the custom dell bootloader with its own. I'm not sure how you can make that partition bootable again, possibly with the dell recovery CD?

CreeDorofl

Posted 2011-03-19T18:19:16.417

Reputation: 2 053