Packard Bell's rescue floppy

[noop]

Hi,
A friend has a problem with its Packard Bell computer.
Looks like the hard disk is failing (plenty of disk errors in the Windows
XP's event observer, but Seagate diagnostic tools find only one bad
sector...).
The computer come with a red floppy disk which is supposed to reinstall
Windows, so I guess it uses a hidden partition or Alternate Data Streams.

Question:
With that Packard Bell's rescue floppy, is it possible to add a second hard
disk, reinstall Windows on the new disk and then discard the bad drive?

Or will I need to buy a new Windows XP?

Thanks!

 

[old jon]

Hi,
A friend has a problem with its Packard Bell computer.
Looks like the hard disk is failing (plenty of disk errors in the Windows
XP's event observer, but Seagate diagnostic tools find only one bad
sector...).
The computer come with a red floppy disk which is supposed to reinstall
Windows, so I guess it uses a hidden partition or Alternate Data Streams.

Question:
With that Packard Bell's rescue floppy, is it possible to add a second
hard
disk, reinstall Windows on the new disk and then discard the bad drive?

Or will I need to buy a new Windows XP?

Thanks!

Check out the errors\warnings is it a software prob. or def. hardware prob
?.
Put the disk in and try it. But if the hidden? partition is on a slave
drive, it might not find it. 1 bad sector doesn`t sound too bad, but how old
is thedrive ?. ..J

 

[Dark Warrior_]

Hi,
A friend has a problem with its Packard Bell computer.
Looks like the hard disk is failing (plenty of disk errors in the Windows
XP's event observer, but Seagate diagnostic tools find only one bad
sector...).
The computer come with a red floppy disk which is supposed to reinstall
Windows, so I guess it uses a hidden partition or Alternate Data Streams.

Question:
With that Packard Bell's rescue floppy, is it possible to add a second hard
disk, reinstall Windows on the new disk and then discard the bad drive?

Or will I need to buy a new Windows XP?

Thanks!

why don't you order the restore cds from packardbell. they normaly charge
around £15 for apx 3 cds (note this is in the UK)

 

[Ronald Reitch LMT]

Packard Bell still makes PCs?
PB was my starter machine in '99
I still have the recovery disk (somewhere)

 

[DaveW]

The rescue floppy can hold up to 1.4 MB of data.
Windows XP consists of 600 MB of data.
No, XP is not on the floppy.
Yes, you have to buy a new copy of XP.

 

[Ronald Reitch LMT]

WOW! I found it. Its a master recovery cd but I have trashed the PB
long ago.

 

[Ronald Reitch LMT]

Let me know if you need it Bob

WOW! I found it. Its a master recovery cd but I have trashed the PB
long ago.

 

[Ronald Reitch LMT]

OOPS! Sorry for the binary file and multi post.

 

[kony]

The rescue floppy can hold up to 1.4 MB of data.
Windows XP consists of 600 MB of data.
No, XP is not on the floppy.
Yes, you have to buy a new copy of XP.

NO, nobody does.

Their license to use XP does not disappear.
That license is what was paid for, not the data on the disc.

They can use one of the various windows key finders (Google
should find some) to reveal their installation key (though
perhaps unnecessary as it should be on their certificate of
authenticity, a sticker on some cases. Next they can borrow
and even duplicate anyone else's same version of (OEM) XP.

 

[kony]

Hi,
A friend has a problem with its Packard Bell computer.
Looks like the hard disk is failing (plenty of disk errors in the Windows
XP's event observer, but Seagate diagnostic tools find only one bad
sector...).
The computer come with a red floppy disk which is supposed to reinstall
Windows, so I guess it uses a hidden partition or Alternate Data Streams.

Question:
With that Packard Bell's rescue floppy, is it possible to add a second hard
disk, reinstall Windows on the new disk and then discard the bad drive?

Or will I need to buy a new Windows XP?

Thanks!

If you have access to partition magic you may be able to
unhide the partition. Otherwise, programs like Ghost or
Driveimage may still be able to dupe this "system" partition
to the new drive... and perhaps dupe the entire drive sans
any data lost to bad sectors so a windows reinstall may not
even be necessary.

 

[noop]

Ok thanks for all the suggestions, I'll first try to clone the drive.

 

[Dark Warrior_]

The rescue floppy can hold up to 1.4 MB of data.
Windows XP consists of 600 MB of data.
No, XP is not on the floppy.
Yes, you have to buy a new copy of XP.

that's one option to buy another XP CD or he could just phone packardbell
for his country and ask to buy the restore cds.

oh and for the idea for copying the restore partion from the old h/d to the
new one. think you find that isn't going to work out well.

some packardbell models let you create a master cd in windows. goto start -
programs - packardbell tools - smart tools.
if there the option to do it you should see a cd icon at the bottom of smart
tools. (not the floppy one, that makes another boot floppy)

 

[kony]

that's one option to buy another XP CD or he could just phone packardbell
for his country and ask to buy the restore cds.

So far we can't even be sure there is any need to do a fresh
windows install.

oh and for the idea for copying the restore partion from the old h/d to the
new one. think you find that isn't going to work out well.

If you have information about why you feel that isn't going
to work, it might be useful to share it with us.
Technically, it certainly should work, providing all the
needed information is available.

My initial thoughts on it are that it may simply need be a
hidden partition of same filesystem, same name, and perhaps
same logical location. IE- if it was the 2nd partition on
the original drive, recreate it as 2nd partition on the new
drive. One thing we can be somewhat confident of- they're
not going to tie a generic product image to a specific HDD
serial #, and it would be quite unlikely to tie it to a
make, model or capacity of drive either, as these are
variables that can (and often do) change before they'd
finished selling a product line and/or dealt with
customer-ordered upgrades.

some packardbell models let you create a master cd in windows. goto start -
programs - packardbell tools - smart tools.
if there the option to do it you should see a cd icon at the bottom of smart
tools. (not the floppy one, that makes another boot floppy)

Depending on what's on that PB floppy, the OP may not even
need to recreate same OEM partition at all. By looking at
the contents of the floppy it may reveal how/where it's
calling this restoration process. Likely it's a boot floppy
for the most part, that loads a DriveImage-Lite type of
program which unzips password protected images or
directories. It may not be that exact mechanism, but taking
a look at it can't hurt.

 

[Dark Warrior_]

So far we can't even be sure there is any need to do a fresh
windows install.




If you have information about why you feel that isn't going
to work, it might be useful to share it with us.
Technically, it certainly should work, providing all the
needed information is available.

My initial thoughts on it are that it may simply need be a
hidden partition of same filesystem, same name, and perhaps
same logical location. IE- if it was the 2nd partition on
the original drive, recreate it as 2nd partition on the new
drive. One thing we can be somewhat confident of- they're
not going to tie a generic product image to a specific HDD
serial #, and it would be quite unlikely to tie it to a
make, model or capacity of drive either, as these are
variables that can (and often do) change before they'd
finished selling a product line and/or dealt with
customer-ordered upgrades.

packardbell use some thing call a "tattoo" which is like you said it is. it
hold information on what device that pc should have. if it sees some thing
different, you would need to re-tattoo it for the restore to work.