restore disk

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Guest

I am in the process of purchasing a new PC which will be my first experience
with Vista. I was told by my retailer that Vista PCs are no longer sold with
Operating System Recovery disks to be used to reinstall the OS and drivers in
the event of a crash. They offered to create one for me (for a fee, of
course). I would not want to be without OS reinstallation capability as I
have had to wipe my hard drive clean on my XP PC multiple times (due to
viruses, poor performance, etc).

I have noticed on some discussion groups that Vista is partitioned
differently so that the OS can be reinstalled without using a Recovery disk.
Is this true? and can it be done easily by someone who knows how to
reinstall using a traditional Recovery disk? The bottom line is, do I need
to spend $$ to have a Recovery disk, or will I be OK without it? Thanks for
your help.
 
If you are purchasing a major brand computer it will either have:

1. A restore partition on your computer to use in case of catastrophic
system failure

OR

2. A way for YOU to create restore disks the first time you boot up the
computer

You paying to have someone else do such a simple task is foolish.

--


Regards,

Richard Urban
Microsoft MVP Windows Shell/User
(For email, remove the obvious from my address)
 
Richard said:
If you are purchasing a major brand computer it will either have:

1. A restore partition on your computer to use in case of
catastrophic system failure

OR

2. A way for YOU to create restore disks the first time you boot up
the computer

You paying to have someone else do such a simple task is foolish.
Click to expand...

I just read that this is one of the ways that Best Buy is ripping off
their customers. And yes, I'm using "ripping off" on purpose and meaning
it to be that harsh. I don't know who the OP's retailer is but it is
definitely time to find a different one.


Malke
 
I personally have talked to three people who were given the opportunity to
purchase this service!

--


Regards,

Richard Urban
Microsoft MVP Windows Shell/User
(For email, remove the obvious from my address)
 
Your retailer is filling your head with a load of rubbish. Major
manufacturer's, i.e., Dell (better known as Royalty customers) have to
supply a copy of the windows operating system on a partition on the hard
drive or a set of recovery disks. Small computer companies, i.e., one man
operations etc, need to supply you with the original OEM DVD.

If a company is refusing to supply a valid way of restoring your PC to
factory conditions if something goes wrong (without charging you for the
privilege) then go buy the PC from somewhere else. In my opinion these
people don't deserve to be in business!

--
John Barnett MVP
Associate Expert
Windows - Shell/User

Web: http://xphelpandsupport.mvps.org
Web: http://vistasupport.mvps.org

The information in this mail/post is supplied "as is". No warranty of any
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reliability or content of this mail/post. The Author shall not be liable for
any direct, indirect, incidental or consequential damages arising out of the
use of, or inability to use, information or opinions expressed in this
mail/post..
 
Thanks very much for the info; I had a feeling this would be the case. And
by the way, you are correct that Best Buy is the culprit!!
 
You are smart to get info from the dealers and then come to a place like
this for a reality check. As others have said, there has to be a way to get
to a recovery partition or make a recovery disc. In many cases, you can do
both.

I purchased a cheap Compaq desktop model with Vista Basic. Prior to booting
up, I used the DOS version of Norton Ghost and an external USB hard drive to
make a compressed image of the original hard drive. I then put a spare hard
drive in the computer, replacing the original drive, and restored the Ghost
image to this spare hard drive and tried to boot up. The boot failed, but
with some investigation, I found that Vista uses a master boot record that
is different from previous OSs, and my old Ghost didn't know how to handle
it. I found a free DOS program that can save and restore master boot
records (MBRWiz), and after switching the hard drives a couple of times and
using MBRWiz, my spare drive was now bootable and I went through the 'first
boot' process to verify that everything was working well. Bottom line: I
now have an image that I know I can use to completely restore my computer to
its original 'out of the box' condition. This is expecially important if
you ever decide to sell the computer -- you restore the original image and
the new owner won't be able to snoop into your stuff because he/she is also
getting the 'out of the box' experience. Acronis TrueImage can be used
instead of Norton Ghost. The image can be written to DVDs for archival and
recovery purposes.

My Compaq came with no recovery discs, but has the recovery partition, which
is not hidden. It is best not to save any files in this partition. The
empty space may be needed for doing a recovery. Compaq allows you to make
one set of recovery discs. Depending on the type of disc burner you have,
it will take maybe 6 to 10 CDs, 1 or 2 DVD-Rs, or 1 or 2 DVD-DLs. The burn
process typically gives you an option to validate the discs. If your
computer won't burn the kind of disks you want (I wanted DVD-DLs, to
minimize the number of discs to store), you can disable your internal burner
in device manager, reboot, and then do the 'create recovery disc' process.
On my Compaq, it gave me no choice on which burner to use, so I used this
method to give it no choice but the one I wanted. Making recovery CD/DVDs
is something you can do yourself.

-Paul Randall
 
scottfmd said:
Thanks very much for the info; I had a feeling this would be the case. And
by the way, you are correct that Best Buy is the culprit!!
Click to expand...

Then I'm very glad you checked here first. Best Buy also tried to rip
off one of my clients with "added services". She found quite a good deal
on an HP desktop machine (Vista) and it came with a printer. Now, as you
probably know those sorts of deals are loss leaders where the store
knows it won't make any money. They are meant to get you into the store
where the sales people will try to sell you an "upgraded" package. Best
Buy tried to get my client to pay something like $70 (!!!) for
"preparing the computer for the printer". This meant going to HP's
website and downloading the drivers. They weren't going to actually set
up the printer for her!

Then they tried to get her to also pay something like $175 for
"optimization". So now the additional $145 made her "good deal" computer
not a good deal!

These people are a menace. If you go to the store with the knowledge of
what you need/want/will get firmly in your head and don't let the sales
people do anything but take your credit card for just those items, you
can sometimes get a good deal in places like Best Buy or CompUSA. But
you have to be vigilant.

Good luck


Malke
 
At the end of your message you say a recovery disk is something on can do
themselves. I have a new HP and I did not have any CD's so I skipped the
recovery disk on setup adn I now have CD's and was going to do the recovery
disks but I can not find out where to do it. All I find is the resotre and
backup section, is this it? Also after reading this I see I need to get DVD's
for the recovery disks instead of CD's. Any help with this would be great.

Norma
 
Sorry I missed your reply, Norma
Search in Help & Support for the three words create recovery disc. This
should lead you to instructions and a link that starts the process. I've
seen others say that they only had 90 days to this, but on my machine, it
has been 4 months since I last reinstalled my original hard drive image, and
it didn't say I couldn't, although I didn't go beyond the screen that says
how many of the various disc types would be required. I made an image of my
hard drive before booting it into Windows, so my image truely brings the
machine back to its out of the box state.

-Paul Randall
 
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