| Author |
Message |
Guest
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 Posted:
Wed Oct 26, 2005 1:56 am Post subject:
Make restore CD from FirstWare partition? |
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I want to be able to upgrade my laptop's hard disk. It's one of those
POS units that has FirstWare installed, and no restore CDs. Is there a
way to make a restore CD from the FirstWare partition? It seems that
some OEMs enabled this feature in cME, but not the people who made my
laptop. |
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Barry Watzman
Guest
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| Posted:
Wed Oct 26, 2005 7:26 am Post subject:
Re: Make restore CD from FirstWare partition? |
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There may be. Look for an I386 folder (it can be anywhere .... root, or
\Windows or \Windows\Options\Cabs are the most common locations). If it
is about 400 megabytes (or more) and it has at least Winnt32.exe, and
preferably also Winnt.exe, then you have it. Burn that folder to a CD.
zwsdotcom@gmail.com wrote:
| Quote: | I want to be able to upgrade my laptop's hard disk. It's one of those
POS units that has FirstWare installed, and no restore CDs. Is there a
way to make a restore CD from the FirstWare partition? It seems that
some OEMs enabled this feature in cME, but not the people who made my
laptop.
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Guest
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| Posted:
Wed Oct 26, 2005 2:43 pm Post subject:
Re: Make restore CD from FirstWare partition? |
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| Quote: | There may be. Look for an I386 folder (it can be anywhere .... root, or
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That is not going to make a restore CD. I want to back up the restore
image in the HPA, not just the material that's visible in the regular
filesystem. There's a bunch of stuff besides Windows preloaded on the
machine, and the installers for that other stuff are not present in the
filesystem. |
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Barry Watzman
Guest
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| Posted:
Wed Oct 26, 2005 9:57 pm Post subject:
Re: Make restore CD from FirstWare partition? |
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If this exists, it will make a CD from which Windows can be reinstalled
from scratch on a blank hard drive. It probably won't be the exact full
installation of the restore partition, it won't have all of the "junk"
on it. It will be more like having a Windows retail CD. In this
regard, most people would consider this "better".
zwsdotcom@gmail.com wrote:
| Quote: | There may be. Look for an I386 folder (it can be anywhere .... root, or
That is not going to make a restore CD. I want to back up the restore
image in the HPA, not just the material that's visible in the regular
filesystem. There's a bunch of stuff besides Windows preloaded on the
machine, and the installers for that other stuff are not present in the
filesystem.
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Guest
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| Posted:
Wed Oct 26, 2005 10:01 pm Post subject:
Re: Make restore CD from FirstWare partition? |
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| Quote: | on it. It will be more like having a Windows retail CD. In this
regard, most people would consider this "better".
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I know what it does, but it's not what I asked for - I want to be able
to restore the factory state. Some of the factory preload material is
drivers (e.g. for the WLAN card) that have custom VID/PID and the
custom drivers are not available for download from the manufacturer. |
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Lurking Rat in 'Da HoodŽ
Guest
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| Posted:
Wed Oct 26, 2005 10:17 pm Post subject:
Re: Make restore CD from FirstWare partition? |
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zwsdotcom@gmail.com wrote:
|
|I want to be able to upgrade my laptop's hard disk. It's one of
| those POS units that has FirstWare installed, and no restore CDs.
| Is there a way to make a restore CD from the FirstWare partition?
| It seems that some OEMs enabled this feature in cME, but not the
| people who made my laptop.
|
After reading your discussion with Barry .. maybe there's another
alternative if your OEM didn't include an application to build your own
restore set.
When I upgraded my hard disk, I also purchased a USB 2.0 disk caddy for
about US$20. I chose a caddy with an aluminum case for durability (read on
... this was not a one-shot deal).
I mounted the new hard disk in the caddy and used Acronis True Image to
Clone the disk. I was able to clone all the partitions on the disk,
including the restore partition. True Image allowed this, even though the
new disk was larger than the original (I was permitted to adjust the size of
the resulting partitions on the new disk to allocate the additional space).
Once complete, I swapped out the hard drive and booted the computer up. The
Add New Hardware Wizard recognized that I had a new disk installed (and
basically did nothing, as the default Microsoft IDE driver was reinstalled).
When I was certain that the new disk was a stable "keeper" I installed the
original disk in the USB 2.0 caddy and, using disk management, deleted all
the partitions from it, including the recovery partition and formatted it
into one partition. I now use True Image to make Incremental Backups on the
original disk as part of my regular backup strategy (this is not my only
backup).
I was recently evacuated from my home due to the wildfires in Southern
California and it was very handy to pack up my 2.5" backup disks (I have
three) along with my computer.
Something to consider.
Jef |
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Guest
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| Posted:
Thu Oct 27, 2005 5:10 pm Post subject:
Re: Make restore CD from FirstWare partition? |
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Hello to all.
I just found this topic. I want only to add that zwsdot...@gmail.com
could just use True Image to save and restore his data and then delete
all useless information and software from it and keep all his unique
drivers. ATI is the best for this purpose, I use it for over a year
and successfully updated to the version 9. |
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Guest
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| Posted:
Thu Oct 27, 2005 6:15 pm Post subject:
Re: Make restore CD from FirstWare partition? |
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| Quote: | I just found this topic. I want only to add that zwsdot...@gmail.com
could just use True Image to save and restore his data and then delete
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Argh. People, this is not what I asked for. I am aware of Ghost, et al,
just as I'm aware that these programs cannot look inside nor duplicate
the HPA. I am aware that there's miscellaneous crap inside the OEM
preload image.
The Phoenix cME environment supports a kind of plugin or add-on
application architecture. Googling appropriately leads me to believe
that _some_ OEMs (not mine) provide a plugin that allows the user to
create a full restore CD set from the HPA. (The restore CD set will
actually _restore_ a damaged/nonexistent HPA). That's what I'm asking
for. I want to be able to restore the laptop to factory state given a
blank hard disk. The purpose of this is to allow me to experiment,
upgrade, etc. and still resell the laptop later in its factory
configuration. |
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Russ
Guest
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| Posted:
Fri Oct 28, 2005 8:32 pm Post subject:
Re: Make restore CD from FirstWare partition? |
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one of the things I ask when I bought a new laptop, "Does it have restore
cd's?"!
--
Russ
Visit Alaska @ http://www.tannersacre.com
<zwsdotcom@gmail.com> wrote in message
news:1130346085.379862.315460@z14g2000cwz.googlegroups.com...
| Quote: |
on it. It will be more like having a Windows retail CD. In this
regard, most people would consider this "better".
I know what it does, but it's not what I asked for - I want to be able
to restore the factory state. Some of the factory preload material is
drivers (e.g. for the WLAN card) that have custom VID/PID and the
custom drivers are not available for download from the manufacturer.
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