Dell program reset computer to factory condition??

[Haole Boy]

Aloha everyone. Just picked up a Dell from a customer. The story he told me was that for a while he was getting a notification (with a Dell logo) saying that whatever this program is, it wants to reset his computer to factory condition - i.e. reload Windows 7. He just closed the notification every time it came up. And then one day sits down at his computer and it tells him the reset is underway! He claims he did not click 'OK' to do this, and no one else in the house did either. And, it looks like it's an out-of-the-box level of Win 7. Fortunately, his personal files are still there, but I'll need to update Win 7 and reinstall a bunch of programs.

The whole situation is very strange. Has anyone seen anything like this? Any hints on things I can look for to try and figure out what happened?

There is no Windows.old directory to try and recover his system from.

Mahalo,

Harry Z.

 

[kwest]

i have seen this before. your customer isn't telling you the truth.

 

[Haole Boy]

i have seen this before. your customer isn't telling you the truth.

I do know this guy well. If he clicked 'yes' he would admit to it. I suspect someone else "helped" him....

But my main concern is what the heck is this notification from (supposedly) Dell that reset his computer?

Mahalo,

Harry Z.

 

[kwest]

yeah i haven't seen that notice before. weird.

 

[Slaters Kustum Machines]

The only thing I could think of would be Dell Backup and Recovery, but why it would prompt to restore to factory is beyond me.

 

[GTP]

What does Dell Support say about it?

 

[AML]

Customers lie, or tell half truths. Now sometimes they believe they didn't do anything and when you show them they did they say well that shouldn't have happened... i had a customer last week said he got a phone call from someone about his computer he swears he did not let them have access to their computer but somehow they were moving his mouse and opening programs. I checked he went to gotomypc... they click on things , download things install things, and they dont think they have done anything to give access or screw up there machines...unfortunately we cant say what we all are thinking, but we just have to educate them... remember these people are putting food on your table..

A computer will always do what you tell it to do...rarely what you want it to do ....Murphys

 

[Haole Boy]

What does Dell Support say about it?

Computer is out of warranty, so can't see the point in paying for them to tell me they didn't do it. My guess is that this is some sort of malicious malware, but I can't prove it.

Customers lie, or tell half truths. Now sometimes they believe they didn't do anything and when you show them they did they say well that shouldn't have happened... i had a customer last week said he got a phone call from someone about his computer he swears he did not let them have access to their computer but somehow they were moving his mouse and opening programs. I checked he went to gotomypc... they click on things , download things install things, and they dont think they have done anything to give access or screw up there machines...unfortunately we cant say what we all are thinking, but we just have to educate them... remember these people are putting food on your table..

A computer will always do what you tell it to do...rarely what you want it to do ....Murphys

No argument from me on this...

 

[Haole Boy]

This gets curiouser and curiouser... Just installed Malwarebytes V3 on the machine. His premium license was recognized immediately. I'm assuming the licensing status is stored somewhere in the registry. If it is stored there then how did it survive the system reset? Or do they have their licensing database on a server and when MWB starts up it checks the license condition?

 

[Porthos]

Or do they have their licensing database on a server and when MWB starts up it checks the license condition?

If the key has not been misused it will activate.

 

[ohio_grad_06]

One thing that comes to mind. It seems like a few years ago some companies, maybe Dell and hp, had an option if the computer had been powered down wrong, as in powered not a clean shut down, the screen that came up asking if you wanted to start in safe mode etc, well I seem to remember some of these systems also having an option to "repair your computer".

When you selected that, they repaired it all right, by putting you into the interface for factory system restore! If clients didn't know, they couple really mess up their machine. I remember having to blow away systems and do clean installs because systems kept wanting to reinstall the os like that and messed up some otherwise working systems. I remember doing it and deleting all traces of the recovery partitions so that if the system tried to do that, that there wouldn't be a recovery partition to do it from.

 

[nlinecomputers]

One thing that comes to mind. It seems like a few years ago some companies, maybe Dell and hp, had an option if the computer had been powered down wrong, as in powered not a clean shut down, the screen that came up asking if you wanted to start in safe mode etc, well I seem to remember some of these systems also having an option to "repair your computer".

When you selected that, they repaired it all right, by putting you into the interface for factory system restore! If clients didn't know, they couple really mess up their machine. I remember having to blow away systems and do clean installs because systems kept wanting to reinstall the os like that and messed up some otherwise working systems. I remember doing it and deleting all traces of the recovery partitions so that if the system tried to do that, that there wouldn't be a recovery partition to do it from.

This. OEMs are allowed to put menu items in the Windows Recovery Environment. This has been possible all the way back to Vista. If for some reason Windows could not boot up and Start up repair failed to fix it then he may have clicked around enough to do the nuke and pave. Not much you can do about post event. That is what you get when you try to fix it yourself and the tool Dell gives you is a loaded revolver with instructions to "place the gun to your temple and pull the trigger."

 

[ohio_grad_06]

The biggest problem I think was the verbage. People didn't know that repair your computer=reformat. They kind of allowed you to play Russian roulette with your data. If people didn't understand that they could issues like the ops client or worse.

 

[nlinecomputers]

The biggest problem I think was the verbage. People didn't know that repair your computer=reformat. They kind of allowed you to play Russian roulette with your data. If people didn't understand that they could issues like the ops client or worse.

People are walking illiterate and don't read the screen. I've seen the Dell reset screen it flat says that it will delete all data. If the end user had selected factory refresh then he wouldn't have lost the data. He would have lost any after purchase programs installed by him but not data.

 

[nlinecomputers]

And the nag screen he saw was probably Dell's "Backup and Recovery" wanting him to backup his data. It is part of the same program. So finally something puked on his boot sector it booted into recovery and he ended up doing a factory reset from Dell "Backup and Recovery".

 

[Haole Boy]

Mahalo everyone for the replies. Much appreciated.