OT: Computer's...gotta hate 'em.

[Atrocities]

Suicide Junkie said:
Oh, and before you get too far into the reinstallation process;

***Partition your Drive***

Never let windows sit on the same drive letter as your irreplacable stuff.

why?

[StarShadow]

'Recovery' cd's are evil, they generally don't recover anything, they 'restore' your system to 'like-new' condition (ie. they reformat your HD and re-install the OS, and to hell with whatever else you had installed). As SJ said, it's a good idea to have an OS partition, and an 'everything else' partition. I'm really not impressed in the least by OEM's who give you a 'recovery' cd instead of a proper OS cd, then again I build my systems myself, so that's not really an issue for me lol...

[Kevin Arisa]

Partitioning is usually the very first thing I ever do to a computer. Personally, I think all computers should be sold with the drives already partitioned, especially since the average user has no clue what it's all about. Three partitions: System, Apps, and Games at the very least. I never understood the logic of having the entire hard drive being one big "bucket" that everything is tossed into. Not only does partitioning protect against most cases of accidental formatting, it even increases the rate at which a computer finds it's files. Instead of searching through the previously mentioned bucket, it is looking through designated compartments. And if the System partition gets corrupted , then you can reformat that compartment without fear of harming anything else. It's a priceless setup that has saved me vast amounts of trouble in the past.

[Fyron]

Make sure to install TweakUI so you can move various system folders (my documents, desktop, possibly program files) off the Windows no fly zone and into the safe zone. Makes it even easier to get back up and running after Windoze reinstalls.

Atrocities said:
why?

Because Windoze needs semi-frequent reinstalls to fix it after it eats itself. Just part of regular system maintenance.

=0=

Even better is to create a disk clone of the Windows partition just after you install it and your base programs, if you have a few gigs on the other partition you want to devote to this. Don't buy any crappy Symantec products for this. Probably a better tool on that site Sivran linked (and some not so good ones, so make sure to do your testing before you get too far along).

=0=

Dunno that I'd want to have to juggle space between apps and games, personally. That's a tradeoff I'm willing to make.

[Strategia_In_Ultima]

When I saw this title the first thing I thought was "AT", until I saw it was Renegade who created the thread

Of course, it's always a good idea to keep your most important stuff (and your personal stuff, and mods, shipsets etc.) on one or more backup CDs/DVDs. Updating these backups every once in a while will take some time, but you won't lose your data entirely the next time you have a..... situation like this.

[StarShadow]

Yes, what I'd suggest, if you have a DVD burner, is to make your system partition about 4 gigs (8 gigs if you use dual-layer), install your OS and preferred base programs, then image the partition to DVD. That way, you only need to restore the image to have a working system again.

[Fyron]

Writable optical media (and many factory pressed) are rather fickle, unfortunately. Great for short term, but dodgy in the long run. Good to make 2 copies of the really important stuff.

[Atrocities]

Imperator Fyron said:
Make sure to install TweakUI so you can move various system folders (my documents, desktop, possibly program files) off the Windows no fly zone and into the safe zone. Makes it even easier to get back up and running after Windoze reinstalls.

Because Windoze needs semi-frequent reinstalls to fix it after it eats itself. Just part of regular system maintenance.

=0=

Even better is to create a disk clone of the Windows partition just after you install it and your base programs, if you have a few gigs on the other partition you want to devote to this. Don't buy any crappy Symantec products for this. Probably a better tool on that site Sivran linked (and some not so good ones, so make sure to do your testing before you get too far along).

=0=

Dunno that I'd want to have to juggle space between apps and games, personally. That's a tradeoff I'm willing to make.

The problem is, most people, including myself, really don't know how to do any of this. So it never gets done.

[Thermodyne]

Imperator Fyron said:



OSes shouldn't be managing boot files willy-nilly during the normal shutdown process... The boot files don't need to change unless you change your hardware or kernel files, which certainly doesn't happen every time you are running the OS. That's just asking for trouble, and definitely a Windows flaw if true.

Note that he never said he was turning it off while shutting down, but rather while booting up. Killing the bootup early on isn't an issue, since all its doing is reading data and building up RAM files. Perhaps not good due to mild stress on the drive, but definitely not going to kill Windows at this point.

The reason that XP does this is so that it will restart after you make changes or add hardware. All Plug and Play OS’s need to overwrite the boot files at shut down. In the old days you had to write these files by hand. Sure it was more reliable, but it was beyond the abilities of most people. What he was doing is called bouncing the loader. If you happen to catch it at the wrong moment, you’ll end up with damaged files. If he had put a bootable floppy in the drive or a bootable OS like BartPC in the CD reader he would have gotten away with it in all likelihood.

[Thermodyne]

Renegade 13 said:
Of course I knew goddamn well formatting it would wipe the hard drive. As I mentioned, the XP restore disk I had did the formatting ON ITS OWN. I did not tell it to format. There was no menu to select "repair" from. Put the CD in the drive, boots automatically from the drive, starts the formatting automatically, no input from me involved. Nothing I could do once the "Recovery" disk was in...

Not worth recovering the data. As mentioned, it's personal stuff, pictures, shipsets, etc. Can't justify the expense to recover.

I know this was an issue of user error, but there is an aspect of poor design in this. Power failures don't exactly let XP do it's thing upon shutdown. Evidently, a power failure could [censored] things up as well, if what I did was sufficient to do it. It should be designed so the boot files aren't messed around with upon shutdown. I'm no expert (obviously) but it seems like there should be little need to, unless maybe there was a software change.

In this case "I can fix this" did fix it. It wrecked the data I had, but having a functioning computer with no data is better than a [censored] up computer that won't even boot! Sure, the problem was caused by me, but I'll be damned if I'll spend $60 per hour to get someone to fix it for me!

Live and learn. Backup data, have a real XP CD, not some bull**** "Recovery" CD that comes with the computer...

Hey, I don’t blame you for trying to fix it yourself; I actually respect that sort of mind set. I only fault you for blaming the OS for not being ID- ten-T proof.

What brand of system is it? Sounds like a real crappy restore CD. I’ve done 100’s of restores on Compaq, Dell, and IBM and they all asked very clearly before doing anything destructive to the data.

You really do need an XP cd. You don’t need one with a key you already own a license. You just need the media so that you can do repairs. Now that you are up and running, take a look at the restore CD. It might have the files you need on it, and then you could burn a copy of the XP setup cd.