Recovery partition

[Mint]

My Compaq computer has a recovery partition and I don't have an
install disk for the Home Edition.

Since I make image backups on a separate drive, do I really need that
recovery partition?

If my primary drive died, could I just throw in another drive and
install the image to it and be good to go ?

 

[pjp]

My Compaq computer has a recovery partition and I don't have an
install disk for the Home Edition.

Since I make image backups on a separate drive, do I really need that
recovery partition?

If my primary drive died, could I just throw in another drive and
install the image to it and be good to go ?

To primary question. Yes if imaging software allows flexibility in partition
sizes otherwise expect some fiddling with things.

That said ...

I believe under that scenario MS demands the OEM provide a means for you to
create a set of "Restore cd/dvd's". Usually this can only be done the once
and is specifically to allow you to reinstall Windows (using product key on
MS label on outside of box) using these restore disks if hard disk fails.
I've been told (unconfirmed here) that if one instead just uses the recovery
partition the OEM product key gets used instead so slight difference when
restoring OS.

I highly recommend you look around the various Start menu programs etc. and
you'll likely find buried within one of the OEM add-on products that there
is some means to create those disks. I had to look in user manual to find
what program had it buried in what sub-menu to accomplish that on one
laptop!!! It wasn't obvious. Anyways, DO IT!!!

Last laptop I bought refused to recognize burner to create disks though the
pre-installed Nero had no problem seeing it. Simple phone call to Compaq (in
this case) and they sent me out two copies of their restore disks. Haven't
had need to use yet

Once I had those restore disks in hand I had no problem passing laptop off
to daughter for school knowing at worst I could always get it back to
factory presumably without even having to hunt for drivers etc.

 

[SC Tom]

My Compaq computer has a recovery partition and I don't have an
install disk for the Home Edition.

Since I make image backups on a separate drive, do I really need that
recovery partition?

If my primary drive died, could I just throw in another drive and
install the image to it and be good to go ?

If you make full images of your C: drive, you should have no problem
restoring that image to a new drive if the old one fails, assuming the
imaging software provides the ability to create a boot CD to restore and
create images with, as Bill said. The recovery partition is not necessary in
this case since all your drivers and everything are already installed. I had
a situation with my laptop that the HDD crapped out (technical term )
just a few months after purchasing it. I make regular images using Acronis
True Image, so when I got the new drive, I put it in, booted from the CD,
restored the image, and in less than an hour, I was at the point I was when
the image was made. Plus I had gained the space that was used for the
recovery partition on the original drive.

I think recovery partitions are fine for creating a system CD/DVD when the
PC is new, but unless the OS fails within a short time of purchase, the
average user is going to lose a lot of stuff by recovering back to day one.
Once the install disks are created, the partition has (IMHO) served its
purpose and can be deleted, and the space added to the rest of the system
partition (although a third party partition manager will have to be used).
The install disks can be used if a system file becomes corrupt and needs to
be replaced (such as when using SFC), as long as it is at the same service
pack level as the system. If your recovery partition is at XP original, and
your system is at SP3, those files aren't valid any more, anyhow.

 

[SC Tom]

*** Reply in line

Right! Well, I can think of two "advantages" in keeping it, however.
1. If he ever wants to sell or donate his computer, he could simply roll
back to the factory install version - IF he keeps that recovery partition.
2. There is a slight bit of hassle in removing the recovery partition,
and what it then requires to be modified to allow the system to boot up
(due to the removal of that recovery partition, which is expected to be
there for the boot loader originally installed by Dell or Compaq or
whomever).

*** When I put the new drive in my Gateway and restored the drive from an
image, the Recvery Partition was not included in that image (on purpose),
and I had to do nothing to any of the files to get it to boot. I just
restored the image, rebooted, and was back in Vista where I left off.

Maybe on an XP system changes would be necessary, but I don't recall doing
anything special on any of Compaq and HP notebooks and PC's we had at work.
And we ran XP on most of them except for a few older NT4.0 ones.
I'm not saying you're incorrect; just that I never ran into that difficulty
or extra steps doing it the way I have been doing it for a number of years.
The only difference I ever saw was the prompt at the bottom of the POST
screen about "Press Fxx to recover your PC" was gone, which leads me to
believe that the PC sees that partition before any boot loaders are searched
for during the boot process, and if it is missing, the BIOS (or whatever)
doesn't display that prompt. Since I never ran into any problems with it, I
never delved any deeper into it.

SC Tom

 

[SC Tom]

*** Reply in line



*** When I put the new drive in my Gateway and restored the drive from an
image, the Recvery Partition was not included in that image (on purpose),
and I had to do nothing to any of the files to get it to boot. I just
restored the image, rebooted, and was back in Vista where I left off.

Maybe on an XP system changes would be necessary, but I don't recall
doing
anything special on any of Compaq and HP notebooks and PC's we had at
work.
And we ran XP on most of them except for a few older NT4.0 ones.
I'm not saying you're incorrect; just that I never ran into that
difficulty
or extra steps doing it the way I have been doing it for a number of
years.
The only difference I ever saw was the prompt at the bottom of the POST
screen about "Press Fxx to recover your PC" was gone, which leads me to
believe that the PC sees that partition before any boot loaders are
searched
for during the boot process, and if it is missing, the BIOS (or whatever)
doesn't display that prompt. Since I never ran into any problems with it,
I never delved any deeper into it.

SC Tom

Dell has two extra partitions on my HD, one for its "Utility Partition" at
the front of the drive, and one for its "Recovery Partition" at the end.
Also, Dell reportedly uses an MBR boot code "customized by Dell", which
can be an issue here.

Let's see what's going on...
The message I get at bootup, just after the BIOS screen, is:
Loading PBR for partition 2... (the PBR is evidently stored in #2)

And here is a copy of my boot.ini contents:

[boot loader]
timeout=30
default=multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(2)\WINDOWS
[operating systems]
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(2)\WINDOWS="Microsoft Windows XP Home
Edition" /noexecute=optin /fastdetect

So it expects Windows, or at least some boot loader code(?), to be in
"partition #2" (I'm a bit confused here as to which or what)

The partition ordering is like this:
#0 is the FAT Dell Utility Partition
#1 is the Windows Partition (NTFS)
#2 is the FAT32 Dell System Restore (DSR) partition.
And Dell reportedly uses a MBR boot code customized by Dell.

So if I removed the DSR partition, it would consequently change the MBR,
and I gather the boot loader would be upset. (I've run into something like
this before as I recall, but now I'm confused.

I can see where Dell has you by the short ones with that setup :-(
You are correct; it would take a little editing to have it boot correctly
after an image. Not impossible using something like Bart's PE or a similar
boot CD, but not exactly something I'd want to have to do on a regular
basis.
But, after owning one for a while, I think the only need for those two
partitions would be, as you said, to restore it to day one to sell it. I
personally would probably yank the hard drive and let someone else put their
own OS and HDD in it. Or just wipe the HDD and sell it blank. An XP-based
machine isn't going to fetch much anyhow.

 

[Mint]

Dell has two extra partitions on my HD, one for its "Utility Partition"at
the front of the drive, and one for its "Recovery Partition" at the end..
Also, Dell reportedly uses an MBR boot code "customized by Dell", which
can be an issue here.

Let's see what's going on...
The message I get at bootup, just after the BIOS screen, is:
Loading PBR for partition 2...  (the PBR is evidently stored in #2)

And here is a copy of my boot.ini contents:

[boot loader]
timeout=30
default=multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(2)\WINDOWS
[operating systems]
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(2)\WINDOWS="Microsoft Windows XP Home
Edition" /noexecute=optin /fastdetect

So it expects Windows, or at least some boot loader code(?), to be in
"partition #2" (I'm a bit confused here as to which or what)

The partition ordering is like this:
#0 is the FAT Dell Utility Partition
#1 is the Windows Partition (NTFS)
#2 is the FAT32 Dell System Restore (DSR) partition.
And Dell reportedly uses a MBR boot code customized by Dell.

So if I removed the DSR partition, it would consequently change the MBR,
and I gather the boot loader would be upset. (I've run into something like
this before as I recall, but now I'm confused.  

I can see where Dell has you by the short ones with that setup :-(
You are correct; it would take a little editing to have it boot correctly
after an image. Not impossible using something like Bart's PE or a similar
boot CD, but not exactly something I'd want to have to do on a regular
basis.
But, after owning one for a while, I think the only need for those two
partitions would be, as you said, to restore it to day one to sell it. I
personally would probably yank the hard drive and let someone else put their
own OS and HDD in it. Or just wipe the HDD and sell it blank. An XP-based
machine isn't going to fetch much anyhow.

Thanks for all the replies.

I had no problem deleting the recovery partition using Easeus
Partition Manager.

Andy

 

[Tim Meddick]

For anyone else following this thread - I think it's not a very wise thing
to delete the recovery partition - what harm is it causing?

If your motivation is that you think the extra partition unsightly - it can
be hidden from explorer, using TweakUI, with no ill-effects for the
recovery option.

But to delete it, for the very small percentage of disk-space you would
gain, would be a mistake, in my view as, unless you are upgrading to Win7,
it would otherwise always remain a valuable resource to enable speedy
recovery of a working operating system. The recovery partition, together
with it's BIOS code, is much faster than having to use the re-install
(recovery) cd-rom that they used to include with a new PC.

==

Cheers, Tim Meddick, Peckham, London.

 

[Mint]

For anyone else following this thread - I think it's not a very wise thing
to delete the recovery partition - what harm is it causing?

If your motivation is that you think the extra partition unsightly - it can
be hidden from explorer, using TweakUI, with no ill-effects for the
recovery option.

But to delete it, for the very small percentage of disk-space you would
gain, would be a mistake, in my view as, unless you are upgrading to Win7,
it would otherwise always remain a valuable resource to enable speedy
recovery of a working operating system.  The recovery partition, together
with it's BIOS code, is much faster than having to use the re-install
(recovery) cd-rom that they used to include with a new PC.

==

Cheers,    Tim Meddick,    Peckham, London.    

Tim,

That's why disk imaging is so handy.

Since using it, I have never had to reinstall my O.S.

I use Macrium Reflect along with a Bart P.E. disk.

Andy

 

[Tim Meddick]

Using other disk-imaging software is fine - creating your own backup images
can save much time having to re-install all of your other software that you
have accumulated over time.

Keeping the recovery partition does not interfere with any other
disk-imaging software you might employ.

As I said, the gains in disk-space are negligible and the partition can be
hidden, so there's no real good reason to be rid of it. The original
recovery partition is completely independent and should always remain as an
extra resource.

Once it's gone, it's gone.

==

Cheers, Tim Meddick, Peckham, London.

For anyone else following this thread - I think it's not a very wise
thing
to delete the recovery partition - what harm is it causing?

If your motivation is that you think the extra partition unsightly - it
can
be hidden from explorer, using TweakUI, with no ill-effects for the
recovery option.

But to delete it, for the very small percentage of disk-space you would
gain, would be a mistake, in my view as, unless you are upgrading to
Win7,
it would otherwise always remain a valuable resource to enable speedy
recovery of a working operating system. The recovery partition, together
with it's BIOS code, is much faster than having to use the re-install
(recovery) cd-rom that they used to include with a new PC.

==

Cheers, Tim Meddick, Peckham, London.

message

Tim,

That's why disk imaging is so handy.

Since using it, I have never had to reinstall my O.S.

I use Macrium Reflect along with a Bart P.E. disk.

Andy

 

[BillW50]

In

Using other disk-imaging software is fine - creating your own backup
images can save much time having to re-install all of your other
software that you have accumulated over time.

Keeping the recovery partition does not interfere with any other
disk-imaging software you might employ.

As I said, the gains in disk-space are negligible and the partition
can be hidden, so there's no real good reason to be rid of it. The
original recovery partition is completely independent and should
always remain as an extra resource.

Once it's gone, it's gone.

Trusting the recovery partition to be safe on a single drive? I don't
think so. I don't normally keep my recovery partitions, but I don't
disagree with anybody that wants to keep them. But only keeping it on
one drive isn't such a hot idea to me. Either make a backup of it or at
least the clone the drive. And most of all, make sure the backup or the
clone actually works. You would be surprised how often they don't.

 

[mm]

For anyone else following this thread - I think it's not a very wise thing
to delete the recovery partition - what harm is it causing?

If your motivation is that you think the extra partition unsightly - it can
be hidden from explorer, using TweakUI, with no ill-effects for the
recovery option.

But to delete it, for the very small percentage of disk-space you would
gain, would be a mistake, in my view as, unless you are upgrading to Win7,

I think you're right, and even if you are upgrading to win7 maybe.
IIUC Win7 is liable to infection and control by Martians, and it may
someday be necessary to revert to XP. At least, who knows, it might.

 

[Tim Meddick]

Yes, it's just nonsensical to want to remove a layer of system recovery
that's been built into a system - when there are *no* ascendable benefits
to gain - and when the presence of this option does not interfere with
employing as many other system recovery utilities as you may feel the urge
to!! (re: disk-imaging / partition saving and restoration software)....

All one would be doing is removing a function that will probably result in
a deflated value if you ever wanted to sell the product on...

==

Cheers, Tim Meddick, Peckham, London.

 

[mm]

*** Reply in line



*** When I put the new drive in my Gateway and restored the drive from an
image, the Recvery Partition was not included in that image (on purpose),
and I had to do nothing to any of the files to get it to boot. I just
restored the image, rebooted, and was back in Vista where I left off.

Maybe on an XP system changes would be necessary, but I don't recall doing
anything special on any of Compaq and HP notebooks and PC's we had at
work.
And we ran XP on most of them except for a few older NT4.0 ones.
I'm not saying you're incorrect; just that I never ran into that
difficulty
or extra steps doing it the way I have been doing it for a number of
years.
The only difference I ever saw was the prompt at the bottom of the POST
screen about "Press Fxx to recover your PC" was gone, which leads me to
believe that the PC sees that partition before any boot loaders are
searched
for during the boot process, and if it is missing, the BIOS (or whatever)
doesn't display that prompt. Since I never ran into any problems with it,
I never delved any deeper into it.

SC Tom

Dell has two extra partitions on my HD, one for its "Utility Partition" at
the front of the drive, and one for its "Recovery Partition" at the end.
Also, Dell reportedly uses an MBR boot code "customized by Dell", which can
be an issue here.

Let's see what's going on...
The message I get at bootup, just after the BIOS screen, is:
Loading PBR for partition 2... (the PBR is evidently stored in #2)

And here is a copy of my boot.ini contents:

[boot loader]
timeout=30
default=multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(2)\WINDOWS
[operating systems]
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(2)\WINDOWS="Microsoft Windows XP Home
Edition" /noexecute=optin /fastdetect

So it expects Windows, or at least some boot loader code(?), to be in
"partition #2" (I'm a bit confused here as to which or what)

Are you sure #2 below is the one you have numbered 2. In the
boot.ini, partitions are number from 1 up. Look just above to see
what partition is XP home.

The partition ordering is like this:
#0 is the FAT Dell Utility Partition
#1 is the Windows Partition (NTFS)
#2 is the FAT32 Dell System Restore (DSR) partition.
And Dell reportedly uses a MBR boot code customized by Dell.

So if I removed the DSR partition, it would consequently change the MBR, and
I gather the boot loader would be upset. (I've run into something like this
before as I recall, but now I'm confused.

Maybe the boot loader wouldn't be upset, because it would go straight
to partition(2).

But the HP I worked on had, iirc, the recovery partition first so
deleting that would cause boot.ini problems iiuc.

There's nothing like having a computer unable to boot because of
boot.ini to learn details about this, but otoh, I'm already forgetting
them.

 

[mm]

It was a bit confusing to me because I thought sometimes the first partition
may be called #0, and sometimes #1, depending on what's referencing it.
But maybe you're right, and the *first partition* is always numbered as #1,
NOT #0, unlike some other things which start at #0.

By coincidence, I'm trying to get my winXP image on a USB drive to
boot, and working from memory, I couldn't easily write my boot.ini, so
I had to google. The last line below is the interesting part: "NOTE:
The first valid number for W is 1, as opposed to X, Y, and Z which
start at 0 (zero)." They must do this just to confuse us.
"Microsoft" comes from the Greek, micro = small, and softux = annoying
things. So it means little annoying things. And this is one of them.


multi(X)disk(Y)rdisk(Z)partition(W)\<winnt_dir>

The X, Y, Z, and W parameters have the following meaning:

* X is the ordinal number of the adapter and should always be 0
(see the text below for the reason).
* Y is always 0 (zero) if the ARC path starts with MULTI(),
because MULTI() invokes the INT 13 call as described above and
therefore does not need the DISK() parameter information.
* Z is the ordinal for the disk on the adapter and is usually a
number between 0 and 3.
* W is the partition number. All partitions receive a number
except for type 5 (MS-DOS Extended) and type 0 (unused) partitions,
with primary partitions being numbered first and then logical drives.
NOTE: The first valid number for W is 1, as opposed to X, Y, and Z
which start at 0 (zero).

 

[mm]

I think if I simply delete the DSR Dell Restore Partition without making
some other changes (like in boot.ini), I might not be able to boot. It all

Like you iirc and the others here, I wouldn't delete the Restore
partition if it were easy to do or not. Tim said it well, there is no
profit in it.

depends on what that Dell boot loader code expects to find before it will
tranfer control over to the windows partition (it might get annoyed that one
of its partitions was removed

I already found out how fussy this Dell stuff is when I replaced (cloned) my
system drive with an identical (but new) hard drive, and can no longer boot
up to the DSR partition (even though these Dell partitions were ALL cloned

I have to move to a bigger HDD than 40 gig, and I would like to take
the Utility partition with me. (I don't think I have a Restore
partition on the 7-year old Dim. 4700, but if I did, I'd want it too?
and I know it will be complicated.

Heck it will be complicated anyhow, because right now XP is D: and
Data is E:, and I'd like to put XP on C: and Data on D: (I recently
read about some obscure software that assumed XP was on C: and didn't
work right when it wasn't. Doing this means going through all the
references to D: and changeing them to C:, which isn't hard with a
simple freeware program whose name I've forgotten again, but I can
find for you if you want it. It changes every reference in the
Registry, the Shortcuts, and somewhere else, (though it doesn't change
..bat files. You have to do them by hand, but no big deal. )

over to the new drive) - this evidently due to something being different in
the MBR.
So in my case (with a new system drive) it now appears the DSR partition
utility is useless due to some specific change in the MBR by putting in a
new, but identical, drive. But I don't really need it since I have several
image backups anyway.


Yeah, I know how it feels. Senioritis. (Without some good and copious
notes at your disposal when you're doing all this stuff you can get really
hosed.

Yup.

 

[mm]

Well, to be fair, there may be a couple of reasons to keep it, but nothing
too essential for most folks, I expect.


And perhaps even more complicated to get it to work if you wanted. It's one
thing to copy over the Restore Partition. But it's quite another to see if
it can still be run from the boot loader.

Yes, that's why I'm finally testing my backup of XP. I"ve been making
a copy for quite a while and it's time, past time, to see if it's
really a bootable copy.

Right now, if I try to run it at boot up, the drive then becomes unbootable,
and I have to run a DSRFIX utitity from Goodell's website to even allow it
to reboot again (unless, perhaps, I could just restore the backup image by
booting up on the Acronis CD, because otherwise I cannot reboot into
windows). Kinda annoying. So my "solution" is just to remember to never
even try accessing that factory Dell Restore partition by pressing the
special restore control key sequence at bootup, even just to check to see if
the option is still there.

That's not worth having, unless you could fix it. OTOH, it might
just be one character that needs changing to fix it. If it is in the
MBR, is there something that will edit the MBR directly. (I've only
worked my way back to boot.ini, and I know that ntdetect.com and ntldr
must be present, but I have no experience with the MBR yet.) And maybe
it's not the MBR but some Dell file. Is there a list of Dell files
that get added to XP by Dell. You're not the only one who wants to
get a larger hard drive, or whatever else you are doing. Does Dell
accomodate such people?

Yup, this sounds like it might be a PIA.

I may give up. The thing that assumed the system was on C: was
something I'll never use. I only suspect there are more things like
that, but I may never use them either.

I think you're thinking of the old COA program ("Change of Address)
developed by someone in PC Magazine (Neil Rubenking), although COA is a bit
long on the tooth now, and I'm not sure if it will work under XP. (As I
recall there was a COA2 version that came later, but I haven't looked into
that either, for XP).

Yeah, that's it, COA2. I think I've already used it with XP, when I
started moving all my data files to a separate partition. I guess the
only important difference in XP would be if the registry has a
different name that COA2 doesn't look at. It's fairly easy to test,
even on a non-test system. COA2 has th practice of changing
everything it finds, and then you have to change back those things you
didn't want changed, it says. So if it doesn't find any items from the
registry, you'd have to change back everything it did find to be back
where you were. That is, you just have to check or uncheck a bunch of
boxes and there aren't so many that this is hard.

Reminds me of some programming experiences too. You don't want to take the
time to document your code since it's so obvious at the time, and a few
months later, you wonder what you were doing and how you got there.

Yup. Although I think that happened when I was in my 30's too.

 

[mm]

Well, to be fair, there may be a couple of reasons to keep it, but nothing
too essential for most folks, I expect.


And perhaps even more complicated to get it to work if you wanted. It's one
thing to copy over the Restore Partition. But it's quite another to see if
it can still be run from the boot loader.

Yes, that's why I'm finally testing my backup of XP. I"ve been making
a copy for quite a while and it's time, past time, to see if it's
really a bootable copy.

Right now, if I try to run it at boot up, the drive then becomes unbootable,
and I have to run a DSRFIX utitity from Goodell's website to even allow it
to reboot again (unless, perhaps, I could just restore the backup image by
booting up on the Acronis CD, because otherwise I cannot reboot into
windows). Kinda annoying. So my "solution" is just to remember to never
even try accessing that factory Dell Restore partition by pressing the
special restore control key sequence at bootup, even just to check to see if
the option is still there.

That's not worth having, unless you could fix it. OTOH, it might
just be one character that needs changing to fix it. If it is in the
MBR, is there something that will edit the MBR directly. (I've only
worked my way back to boot.ini, and I know that ntdetect.com and ntldr
must be present, but I have no experience with the MBR yet.) And maybe
it's not the MBR but some Dell file. Is there a list of Dell files
that get added to XP by Dell. You're not the only one who wants to
get a larger hard drive, or whatever else you are doing. Does Dell
accomodate such people?

Yup, this sounds like it might be a PIA.

I may give up. The thing that assumed the system was on C: was
something I'll never use. I only suspect there are more things like
that, but I may never use them either.

I think you're thinking of the old COA program ("Change of Address)
developed by someone in PC Magazine (Neil Rubenking), although COA is a bit
long on the tooth now, and I'm not sure if it will work under XP. (As I
recall there was a COA2 version that came later, but I haven't looked into
that either, for XP).

Yeah, that's it, COA2. I think I've already used it with XP, when I
started moving all my data files to a separate partition. I guess the
only important difference in XP would be if the registry has a
different name that COA2 doesn't look at. It's fairly easy to test,
even on a non-test system. COA2 has th practice of changing
everything it finds, and then you have to change back those things you
didn't want changed, it says. So if it doesn't find any items from the
registry, you'd have to change back everything it did find to be back
where you were. That is, you just have to check or uncheck a bunch of
boxes and there aren't so many that this is hard.

Reminds me of some programming experiences too. You don't want to take the
time to document your code since it's so obvious at the time, and a few
months later, you wonder what you were doing and how you got there.

Yup. Although I think that happened when I was in my 30's too.

 

[mm]

Well, I feel adding a larger hard drive isn't a big issue UNLESS you want to
preserve that restore capability. I'm not sure how much help Dell would
give on that. (Oh, and yeah, better not ever try using Ctrl-F11 at bootup
to get to that Dell restore partition! But then again, how many people
really would? .

Only people who konw aobut it for one thing! My now first of now-2
second-hand Dells came with all the docs and the owners manual and
everything but a good HDD, and I don't remember reading out cntl-F11.

For that matter, I would think Dell would mention F8, even though it's
an MS tool and not Dell's.

BTW, cntl-f11 the Dell restore? When you say don't use it, you mean
use it to completion, right. It does ask you if you want to go back
to the beginning?

I finally used Windows Disk Management on my second Dell and indeed it
has 2 hidden partitions, and I've used the utilities so the other must
be Restore. In the Dell ng, they told me I could copy that, or
probably both, but I think I'd have to unhide them first. Wndows Disk
Managerment didn't have an Unhide option, so I'm supposed to use
3rd-party software, is that right?

I think I'd like to have the system on C:, however, and would probably bite
the bullet, and run COA2 or whatever to try to get it to work that way.
(this after first making another clone and safekeeping it somewhere in case
I got hosed)

Right, after doing all that. COA2 is really easy to use. I'm 99%
sure I used it with xp. (all that would be necessary woudl be to add
the name of the XP registry to whatever other registry names it
already had in it.

I did look at every reference it changed, and in one or two it was
just text or something and really should have remained C: or D: and
not changed to E:, so I unchecked or whatever the box abd I'm sure it
changed it back again.

There was another program that was part of NOrton Utilities or
something, but I think I trust COA2 more.

BTW, someone (here?) referred me to the freetext editor HxD and it had
an option to insert blank space in the middle of a file, which you
coudl then fill in. This could really come in handy somewhere.

 

[mm]

It would be nice.


Not for me anymore. If *I* try to use it now (having replaced the system
drive), I get "locked up" after BIOS, and can't even reboot into windows.
And the only way out of this mess is either to *carefully* use DSRFIX on a
floppy or pen drive at bootup, OR to just restore the backup image using
Acronis on its bootable CD.
But that's because I replaced the original system drive, and for some
reason, evidently due to something MBR-related, it didn't like it, even
though it was a nearly identical drive.

OTOH, if one had not replaced the system drive, this likely wouldn't be an
issue.

I must be like the people who want to touch whatever has a Wet Paint
sign on it. I don't know why, but for some reason I want to take a
peek at the Restore Partition! And that's really silly, because after
years of reading these ngs, no one wants to reinstall windows less
than I do. I always want to repair it, no matter what people tell me.

However, if one has changed some partition sizes, or added or deleted one,
or something along those lines, then Ctrl-F11 just may not work anymore.

I'm sure the family I got this computer from never did any of that,
but otoh, when I got the computer a month ago, the clock was 2 days
slow and an hour fast or slow (I can't remember). It seems like
someone must have done something to it, probably since it stopped
working right.

For those interested, there are a series of articles on Goodell's website
for Dells. www.goodells.net But a word to the wise is sufficient - you'd
better know what you're doing, and probably backup the existing MBR before
screwing around with this stuff (explained over there).

This is actually a good time for me to fiddle. Once I get their
personal data off the drive (if they say they want it) I won't need
any of this stuff anymore. Maybe even you. I don't have a good
memory for names, but I'm grateful.

But while that fixed winxp, 98 didn't work until after I defragged the
partition, iirc. Who would expect that? I had already run chkdsk.

....

Because I think it's simpler, it does only one thing, and doesn't have
as many platform issues.

I gave up on Norton after around 2000 or so, when it became bloatware, and
sold out to Symantec. Except I still have Norton Partition Magic 8.0, but
that's it.

That's an important one. I used Easeus partitioner to make a win98
partition smaller, and it screwed up the win98! But Paartition Magic
won't do that. Turned out the docs for easeus said it would only run
on 2000 or XP, but didnt' say it would screw up a 98 Partition even
when running under XP. (There was something about that deep in their
files but I only saw that after the problem.

This is when I learned something about fixmbr, fixboot, and editing a
third file. I posted about it here and the thread is in Google.
Someone here gave me great advice

IF you're careful and know what you're doing.
And also, depending on the file type.
(Trying this out on parts of an EXE file would be another story

Yes, but of course that's what backups are for. I know that
displacements from the start of the program are created some time by
compilers or whatever.

 

[Patok]

BTW, someone (here?) referred me to the freetext editor HxD and it had
an option to insert blank space in the middle of a file, which you
coudl then fill in. This could really come in handy somewhere.

I mentioned it in the MBR? thread, but I don't know if you took it from
there, or somebody else mentioned it too. If it is the same - I wouldn't
describe it as 'freetext', but as "free hex".