OK, a month ago I bought a great new Dell- an XPS 8700 loaded with top features. I didn't get around to creating the Dell Factory installation disk until today. It said it needed 10 gigs, so I put it on a 16 gig flash drive.
I presume it will have on it exactly what came from the factory- but, the fact that I waited a month and have installed several programs, will it still produce the same result- and not get messed up with the software I installed? I presume all the original settings, the OS, drivers, whatever, are/were stored somewhere on the boot drive?
Also, it would be superb if I can read more about it in case I never need to use it. Will the machine actually boot up from the flash drive or do I need to go into BIOS to tell it to first try booting from a flash drive?
When it does boot- what will I see? I notice in some old messages- one guy complained that his effort at reinstallation wanted him to enter a user name and password. I don't know if he got that solved.
Will the reinstallation include MS Office that came with the machine? If anyone knows of a detailed file on the Dell web site about the reinstallation process- that I can download- I'd appreciate it.
Just to be safe, I'll be installing Acronis backup- Acronis will create a boot disk and for that, I do need to instruct the BIOS to boot up from the flash drive.
Joe