How I tried fix my partitions and restore a Dell Diagnostic Partition.

Question

UPDATED: 2 September 2012
UPDATE: Now that I reflect back on the incidence, I realize that the Dell Utility partition had lost its ability to boot long before I had messed up my partition table. But I realized it only when I was testing all my partitions after fixing the partition table. But as I have already written this long post, lets just keep it here for future reference of anyone else stumbling across a similar problem. Read on to know about my experience.
RECOMMENDATION: I do not recommend trying out all the steps below as they did not completely solve the problem for me. If you need the Diagnostic Utility, download the update package from Dell's support website for your model. This package can be used to create a boot-able USB drive and/or CD/DVD. These work fine and are pretty fast also.
Something strange happened to me and I am now reporting my experience in trying to solve it (somewhat unsuccessfully!!)
First of all, my setup is: Dell Studio 1555 laptop. I dual boot Windows 7 and Archlinux. So here's how it went:
After using the partitioning tool Gparted under Archlinux to resize a partition, I found a problem had occurred. The Partition was NTFS formatted and all of my data files were stored on it. The partition worked fine under Archlinux as I was able to access my files fine under it. But in Windows, although the partition was listed under Windows explorer, it wanted to format it!! When I tried to access the partition it gave an error that it was not formatted (
The drive is not formatted, do you want to format it now?
). Of course, that was not right and Gparted had messed something up. I fixed that using Testdisk under Archlinux (See the Details). So now the partition problem under windows was fixed. But now another problem cropped up under Archlinux. When I booted into Archlinux and started Gparted to confirm everything was fine I saw something strange in Gparted. The whole space on my hard disk was marked as "unallocated" under Gparted. Windows and Archlinux could "see" the partitions. By this I mean that I was able to boot fine under both my OSes. And I could access all my files under all my partitions. But somehow Gparted was not able to "see" them. Gparted was reporting my whole disk to be marked as unallocated. After that I researched a lot and lots of stuff happened experimenting to fix the problem. I used a lot of utilities. But actually only one fixed the problem-fixparts from the gptfdisk package. But it seemed like a lot of work trying to get the problem fixed (See the Details).
Now we get to the point in discussion. I was able to get my partitions back under Gparted. But I lost the Dell Diagnostics Utility partition's ability to boot up. [Actually, now that I reflect back on the incidence, I realize that the Dell Utility partition had lost its ability to boot long before I had messed up my partition table. But I realized it only when I was testing all my partition after fixing the partition table. But more on this later.] It gave an error that the partition was not found.
So, in short: After all this restoring partitions' visibility under Gparted, I realized that the Dell Utility partition on my Studio 1555 was not booting up. To explain this, it means that when I press F-12 when starting the laptop and select Diagnostics from the menu to run the Diagnostic Utility and after running the Pre-boot System Assesment tests when I consented to boot the Diagnostic Utility partition, it gave me the error that the partition was not found. When I tried to run the "Dell 32 Bit Diagnostics (Graphical User Interface version)" update package under Windows, it resulted in a similar error: Partition not found.
For some background on what makes the Dell Utility partition so special, please read this thread and the third post on this thread.
WARNING: You and only you are responsible for your data. Please make a backup before performing any of the partitioning steps below.
NOTE: Please read the entire post before actually performing the steps.
So, to try and fix this I did the following:
Boot into Windows 7.
Open Disk Management under the Computer Management console (To open the Computer Management console, right click on Computer in the Start menu and select Manage).
Reformat the Dell Diagnostic Utility partition as FAT(not FAT32). This is the first partition on the drive (marked as Healthy (OEM Partition) under the Status column). [This step may not be required, however I had done it. See Notes below.]
UPDATE: After reading around a bit I found that these steps to format the partition might not actually be necessary. Simply changing the type of the partition (as detailed below) might also work. However as I had done that, lets just keep these steps over here.
Reboot into a Linux distribution Live CD (I had Ubuntu 10.10). Or, If you dual boot with a Linux distribution that does not complain about the now inconsistent fstab entry, you can also boot into that distribution directly. I had to boot into Live CD to fix my /etc/fstab.
UPDATE: After considering all the aspects from start to end I have come to a conclusion regarding the efficacy of this method on dual boot machines with Windows and Linux installed. I doubt anyone with a dual boot Windows/Linux setup would be able to boot into the Dell Diagnostic Utility even with the Utility Partition restored. This is detailed below.
(As noted above my Archlinux install did not boot up after I had reformatted  my Dell Diagnostic Utility partition. This is because I was mounting the Dell Utility partition at boot using fstab inside Archlinux. And I was using the UUID to mount the partition. After reformatting the partition its UUID changed. So, it wouldn't mount. And because of how my fstab was setup Archlinux won't boot. So, I had to boot into a live environment to fix this. This step applied only to me. YRMV.) Fix the fstab entry.
(This step also applied to me.) Boot into the repaired Linux Distribution.
And open a Terminal.
In the open terminal run fdisk on your drive, e.g.,
fdisk /dev/sda
This is how it looks:
[abhishek@Nitaichand ~]$ sudo fdisk /dev/sda
Password:
Command (m for help):
To change the partition type give the appropriate command, i.e.,
Command (m for help): t
Specify the partition, i.e.,
Partition number (1-10): 1
Type L to see available codes:
Hex code (type L to list codes):L
0 Empty 24 NEC DOS 81 Minix / old Lin bf Solaris
1 FAT12 27 Hidden NTFS Win 82 Linux swap / So c1 DRDOS/sec (FAT-
2 XENIX root 39 Plan 9 83 Linux c4 DRDOS/sec (FAT-
3 XENIX usr 3c PartitionMagic 84 OS/2 hidden C: c6 DRDOS/sec (FAT-
4 FAT16 <32M 40 Venix 80286 85 Linux extended c7 Syrinx
5 Extended 41 PPC PReP Boot 86 NTFS volume set da Non-FS data
6 FAT16 42 SFS 87 NTFS volume set db CP/M / CTOS / .
7 HPFS/NTFS/exFAT 4d QNX4.x 88 Linux plaintext de Dell Utility
8 AIX 4e QNX4.x 2nd part 8e Linux LVM df BootIt
9 AIX bootable 4f QNX4.x 3rd part 93 Amoeba e1 DOS access
a OS/2 Boot Manag 50 OnTrack DM 94 Amoeba BBT e3 DOS R/O
b W95 FAT32 51 OnTrack DM6 Aux 9f BSD/OS e4 SpeedStor
c W95 FAT32 (LBA) 52 CP/M a0 IBM Thinkpad hi eb BeOS fs
e W95 FAT16 (LBA) 53 OnTrack DM6 Aux a5 FreeBSD ee GPT
f W95 Ext'd (LBA) 54 OnTrackDM6 a6 OpenBSD ef EFI (FAT-12/16/
10 OPUS 55 EZ-Drive a7 NeXTSTEP f0 Linux/PA-RISC b
11 Hidden FAT12 56 Golden Bow a8 Darwin UFS f1 SpeedStor
12 Compaq diagnost 5c Priam Edisk a9 NetBSD f4 SpeedStor
14 Hidden FAT16 <3 61 SpeedStor ab Darwin boot f2 DOS secondary
16 Hidden FAT16 63 GNU HURD or Sys af HFS / HFS+ fb VMware VMFS
17 Hidden HPFS/NTF 64 Novell Netware b7 BSDI fs fc VMware VMKCORE
18 AST SmartSleep 65 Novell Netware b8 BSDI swap fd Linux raid auto
1b Hidden W95 FAT3 70 DiskSecure Mult bb Boot Wizard hid fe LANstep
1c Hidden W95 FAT3 75 PC/IX be Solaris boot ff BBT
1e Hidden W95 FAT1 80 Old Minix
Type the desired code, i.e.,
Hex code (type L to list codes): de
Write the partition table with:
Command (m for help): w
The partition table has been altered!
Calling ioctl() to re-read partition table.
WARNING: Re-reading the partition table failed with error 16: Device or resource busy.
The kernel still uses the old table. The new table will be used at
the next reboot or after you run partprobe(8) or kpartx(8)
Syncing disks.
[abhishek@Nitaichand ~]$
Download the required Diagnostics Update Package from the Drivers Download page for your model. Got mine from here.
Run the downloaded package under the OS you it downloaded for. That is, run the .exe on Windows. Or, if you downloaded the .bin file for Linux then first make it executable:
chmod u+x CL1367A0.bin
And now run it under a Linux distribution with an older version of python installed (I think <2.7). I say this because the .bin package didn't run on an updated Archlinux for me, probably because it has the latest python. I ran it from the Ubuntu 10.10 Live CD and it ran fine under that.
On Windows, If you are not automatically prompted with an option to update your Utility Partition then you need to browse to the location where the package was extracted (for me it was C:\dell\drivers\R239866).
Now you need to manually run the extracted file (for me it was DDDP.exe). Most probably you'll need to right-click it and run it as an Administrator. And if all went well, it will extract/update the diagnostic utilities to/on the Dell Utility Partition.
I believe the above steps should be sufficient for someone who's lucky and who's update package is smart enough. However these steps were not sufficient for me. My "Partition not found" error was gone because I had changed the partition type. And so the update package was able to recognize the partition and extract the necessary files to it. But I was still not able to boot the utility partition. After the Pre-boot System Assessment although I no longer got the "Partition not found" error, but I was just dropped onto the GRUB boot menu prompt.
[UPDATE: As stated above, I realize that the recovery partition had lost its ability to boot long before I had messed up my partition table. But I realized it only when I was testing all my partition after fixing the partition table. Please refer to this forum thread for further Details. I  do not think that it is possible longer to boot from the Dell Utility Parttion on my setup which has GRUB installed to the MBR. But the rest of the post documents my attempts to slove the problem without the knowledge from the forum post.]
Anyways, it was a pain to again and again set up/update the partition and test it after waiting half an hour or so for the Pre-boot System Assessment to complete. But I was determined to solve the problem at-least partially, until next time. So I created a GRUB entry to boot the Utility partition. Assuming the partition is the first partition on the drive (which is the case here), the grub entry is simply:
title Dell Utility
rootnoverify (hd0,0)
chainloader +1
I tried downloading an older update package. I updated my Partition with it. And tested. Still, I was unsuccessful. I researched a little bit and found this link. Out of frustration,I decided to use brute force this time . So, the below are the steps which let me have at-least a glimpse of The Dell Diagnostic Utility booting up from the partition:
Backup your partition table using the sfdisk command (not fdisk).
Follow the instructions in the link I gave above (i.e., http://community.spiceworks.com/how_to/show/1123) and build your Utility Partition from scratch.
Now after that when you try to boot into the OS you'll be presented with an blue bar on top. This is because the mkup batch file from the Dell Diagnostic/Drivers CD/DVD wiped your partition table and rewrote it with only one partition on it- the Dell utility partition.
Boot into a Live environment and restore your partition table from the backup created earlier using sfdisk.
Now boot with a Windows disc to repair your Windows boot problem. This applied to me but may not apply to you.
Again boot into a live environment and restore GRUB to MBR.
After a reboot press F-12 to get to the BIOS boot menu and select Diagnostics.
Let the Pre-boot Assessment run and after its complete it will ask you to press any key to boot the Dell Utility partition. Do that.
You'll notice your still dropped into GRUB instead of getting the Diagnostics GUI.
Now when on GRUB prompt don't boot any other OS.
Press any key (other than <Enter>, that is ) to stop the timer if you have one set.
Now look carefully at the boot menu.
Remember I told you that I had created a GRUB menu entry to boot the Dell Utility partition. Select that. And if you are lucky you might just be able boot the partition. This worked for me (finally!).
After this initial run I was unable to run the Diagnostics GUI from the GRUB menu entry again. I haven't tried to re-run the Pre-boot Assessment and wait to see, if I'm able to boot it from there. But now, I'm satisfied that at-least the file there are in a running condition.
Also, the update package can be used to create boot-able USB drives or boot-able CD/DVDs which can run the Diagnostics just fine. They are almost as fast as the partition (especially the USB which seems even faster). They are recommend, instead of going into this trouble to recreate the partition. That is unless you are a purist/perfectionist .
Notes:
At first, I panicked and tried a lot of steps that are not exactly documented above for the sake of convenience to others who might refer.
I have thus rewritten the post in a manner to make it very general in nature as it did not become very fruitful for myself.  If you attempt to use this guide, use common sense where necessary .
Of course, if you are trying to build a Utility partition on a bare hard drive or you're feeling adventurous, you can always follow this link .
Last edited by bhadotia (2012-10-08 19:03:18)

Answer 1

bhadotia wrote:Anyway's the file downloaded from dell to update the partition for Studio 1555 is corrupted (checksums don't match). My partition still doesn't boot. I'm working to fix this and will update my post when I'm done.
The file seems to create the CD/DVD/Image and USB just fine. So I used this only to create a CD image which I then wrote on a blank CD which seems to work fine. Also, I played around a bit and had some partial success in booting the partition. I've updated my original opening post with the new findings.
Whew!! what a waste of time! Never want to do all of this again .
Last edited by bhadotia (2012-03-03 00:05:22)