Title: RE: (Drifting further afield) Xy under WIN on a laptop, redux {was Re: WinXP/ME}
This is from the LangaList newsletter, published yesterday...
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XP Pre-Installs Have Their Own Problems, Too...
One way to ensure that XP will work OK with all the hardware and software on a system is, of course, to buy the PC new, with XP and all other necessary hardware and software preinstalled: This from-scratch approach avoids most of the hassles of upgrading an existing system, and is probably the very best way to move to XP. It's also the most expensive.
But preinstalls of any OS--- not just XP--- can have drawbacks too, as reader Tom Duda discovered:
"Hi, Fred. I have a new computer, purchased recently, that is made by Hewlett Packard. It came with Win XP Home Edition pre-loaded. I immediately noticed that there were no recovery CDs and called HPs tech support line. I was informed that recovery is performed from the hard drive and that the recovery engine is accessed by tapping the F10 key during system boot. "What," I asked, "happens if the hard drive fails?" The response was -- and this is a verbatim quote -- "If your computer is out of warranty, then you're out of luck."
The recovery files are kept in a hidden 4 gig partition. fdisk, if it is run (and that utility is nowhere to be found on my system), can seriously mangle things because HP has a custom boot loader. That is also apparently why their version of Win XP does not come with FixMBR. I learned about the custom boot loader and the hidden partition from a tech at Roxio, makers of GoBack.
Isn't that swell? I thought you might want to add this to your trove of knowledge. :-)"
That's bad, yes. But even worse is that these recovery files (even if they're out in the open or on a separate CD) often do nothing to protect your data: Many times, these OEM-Recovery tools are a kind of disk-image that restores your hard drive to exactly the way it was when it left the factory. While that can undo problems caused by bad software you later installed, or settings that were changed for whatever reason, it also means that all your data--- every file, document, email, spreadsheet, etc-that you created since you got the machine--- goes away. All your data may get overwritten and become unrecoverable.
And, as Tom says, the OEM recovery tools may be useless if you need to replace a major component, like the hard drive itself.
That's why OEM restore or recovery disks are not to be trusted: You need a separate, independent backup mechanism that you can control, so that you can overwrite only what needs to be overwritten, and/or so that you can put back your data files after using the vendor's recovery method.
And note: The above is not specific to XP or Hewlett-Packard, but applies to *all* similar OEM recovery disks/files.
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-----Original Message-----
From: Norman Bauman [mailto:nbauman@xxxxxxxx]
Sent: Monday, October 29, 2001 10:47 AM
To: xywrite@xxxxxxxx
Subject: Re: Xy under WIN on a laptop, redux {was Re: WinXP/ME}
Mimi,
A backup disk that exists only as an invisible directory on your hard drive
isn't a backup.
If anything happened to your hard drive -- or if you wanted to change your
hard drive for any reason -- you couldn't do it. You'd be left with a
useless iron box and no software. When you contact support, ask them what
they expect you to do in such a circumstance.
You might be able to make a good Linux system out of it.
Norman
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Norman Bauman
411 W. 54 St. Apt. 2D
New York, NY 10019
(212) 977-3223
http://www.nasw.org/users/nbauman; TARGET="_blank">http://www.nasw.org/users/nbauman
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