Topic: Dell recovery CD?

[Tony]

Jeez bro, your in the thick of it with this one, and I'm sorry I cannot offer any advice.

One thing to consider though [for the future] is to partition the hard drive of any PC's you do for your mates. C drive for windows and programes. Another partition where any data they input video's, pictures, docs, etc go [ I even put my Thunderbird and  Firefox default user on there. So when I reimage C Drive, all you emails and such are still there. And last but not least a third partition where you can put a backup image of C drive. Then with the right software, when they feck up, you'll have em sorted in about 10 mins with Acronis back up


You just pop around with your rescue disk, even if thety cannot boot to windows.

[davy51]

It looks like you will have to reinstall windows and make sureyou check mark keep all files

Using your laptop wont work unless they had theirs set on a network

If nothing in their windows is working then something has been deleted from the registry that was very important

You could try taking another hard drive installing it and install windows on it and then pull all the info over

Then install windows on their drive and retrieving the files back

That would be the safest way
Nothing would be lost

[Simon]

It's all getting a bit over my head, to be honest.  I wouldn't really know how to do the second hard drive thing, although I do have my old machine, with Windows XP still on it.  Could I use that in some way?  Maybe take the hard drive out and install it in theirs?  Would it work just like that?  How would I get it to boot from 'my' hard drive instead of theirs?  Would it then just be a question of their hard drive appearing in My Computer on 'my' hard drive installation, and pulling the files over?  I wouldn't want to format 'my' hard drive, as there's still stuff on it that I want to keep.

Tony, yes, once we've got these photos off, I intended to reinstall Windows, and have a separate partition for data.

Rik, I haven't a clue what a LAN boot is.   

One other thing, is there a default Windows XP Registry you can download from somewhere, or would even a working one from my own machine be of any use if it could be imported?  That's probably a silly idea, but as you can see, I'm clutching at straws here.

[Simon]

Oh, just another thought, how about taking their hard drive out, and installing it in my old machine?  Presumably that would still boot from my original Windows installation, and 'their' hard drive would be treated as a slave, that I can just pull the files over from?

[Tony]

Oh, just another thought, how about taking their hard drive out, and installing it in my old machine?  Presumably that would still boot from my original Windows installation, and 'their' hard drive would be treated as a slave, that I can just pull the files over from?

Yes you could do that Bro, but remember to set the "jumpers" on their hard drive to "Slave"

Davy51 is also right, I have a saved Acronis "Image" of W2K Pro loaded with the latest security updates, and AVG on it. It turns a empty or un bootable hard drive into a fully functioning  Windows installation in about 4 minutes.

None of that validation crap with W2K Pro, any disk, any where , any time, time after time after time....cost me a tenner on Ebay back in 2002....I was robbed 

[davy51]

It's all getting a bit over my head, to be honest.  I wouldn't really know how to do the second hard drive thing, although I do have my old machine, with Windows XP still on it.  Could I use that in some way?  Maybe take the hard drive out and install it in theirs?  Would it work just like that?  How would I get it to boot from 'my' hard drive instead of theirs?  Would it then just be a question of their hard drive appearing in My Computer on 'my' hard drive installation, and pulling the files over?  I wouldn't want to format 'my' hard drive, as there's still stuff on it that I want to keep.

Tony, yes, once we've got these photos off, I intended to reinstall Windows, and have a separate partition for data.

Rik, I haven't a clue what a LAN boot is.   

One other thing, is there a default Windows XP Registry you can download from somewhere, or would even a working one from my own machine be of any use if it could be imported?  That's probably a silly idea, but as you can see, I'm clutching at straws here.

It wouldnt boot from your hard drive and work the machines are different
you would use an empty hard drive as master installing windows
Their drive would be a slave
You could then pull the pics to the new drive then switch the drives and install windows on theirs
Then just pull the pics and folders to their drive again

The biggest problem is nothing on their drive is working or it would be easier
Their drive is almost like having a dead drive that you are trying to get the info off of

[davy51]

Oh, just another thought, how about taking their hard drive out, and installing it in my old machine?  Presumably that would still boot from my original Windows installation, and 'their' hard drive would be treated as a slave, that I can just pull the files over from?

That would work
Then all you need to do is put their drive back in their machine and install windows
Then use your drive as slave to retieve the info to their drive

[Simon]

Right, I think that's the way to go then. 

[Sandra]

You could poss try one of those Linux distros that run from a CD Simon.
That way you may be able to connect an external USB drive and drag everything you need from their hard drive to it then reinstall XP on their drive and drag stuff back.

[Simon]

Yes, that's a possibility, San.  I'll get the machine back here and take things from there. 

[Simon]

Just to update those who may be interested, I couldn't piggy back the hard drive into my old PC, because it was SATA and my old one is all IDE, so that idea was killed on the spot.

What I did then, was to start looking at the Services and Applications that I mentioned had all been disabled, and found that by selecting Properties, then choosing Automatic from the drop down menu, some of the services could be manually started.  I managed to suss out which ones were related to Plug & Play, external drives, etc, and also managed to get some programs running, so tried again to install SuperAntiSpyware, this time successfully, but each time it ran, it kept freezing, so gave that up as a bad job.

I managed to retrieve the treasured photos to my external drive, so once I knew they were safe, I felt more relaxed about delving into things, so inserted the Dell CD and rebooted.  After getting it to boot from the CD, I tried the Recovery console, but couldn't make head or tail of it, so went for the Repair installation option, which seemed to go OK, but produced some errors about missing .dlls, which I think were connected to the spyware.  I ignored the messages, but when it came to start Windows, it got to the first Windows screen, then it all just went blank, and wouldn't go any further.  I then decided the only course of action was to do a clean reinstall, so that's as far as I've got tonight.  I did create a separate partition for the Windows installation, leaving the rest for documents, so that should hopefully act as a safety barrier, should anything like this happen again.  I shall now be spending most of the morning setting Windows up, and installing programs, but at least it's a nice fast machine to work on.

[Tony]

Good on you Bro, you deserve a medal for that never say die attitude. Like you say, life will be a lot easier if all personal "input" data goes onto a another partition.

[davy51]

Good deal
Sometimes Dell computer can be a pain when trying to get windows installed
I've had one or two that took days of continuous work to get installed because of missing DLL's and other errors

[Simon]

All up and running now, and just installing SP3.  Should be rid of it by this afternoon!   

[Clive]