Hello,
I've tried two different approaches with regards to completely factory restoring the laptop back to how it was out of the box.
1) When the laptop was new, I immediately made a recovery image using the dell utility - this resulted in a USB thumb drive that was called "Recovery" - using this thumbdrive restored windows and the dell drivers but does not appear to truly but the laptop back to factory state. As an example, the default wallpaper doesn't match what it was out of the box, instead its a windows default background. There's a few other things that doesn't match how it was when brand new and out of the box.
2) I downloaded a rather large ISO file off the Dell Support site, used the Dell utility and copied it to a USB thumb stick. Same thing, it doesn't appear to truly return the machine back to how it was out of the box (Dell wallpaper isn't present, Dell utilities aren't present).
Is there something wrong with the factory restore images or am I not doing something correctly? According to support, these images will "return it exactly to how it was out of the box" - doesn't appear its really doing that.
Thanks!