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Vista saved my A$$??????

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by the scummy one 2 views

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It is True -- I can hardly believe it myself. Ok Oz, Vista has it's place.

Over the weekend I used Ghost 10 to clone my HDD that was starting to make noise. It hung at 99 percent with 1 second left after a 9 hour copy.
I left it sitting at 1 second for 26 hours, making sure that it was not 'not responding'. Finally I decided to try to clone it in Linux, which seems to work for me.
PCLOS -- my usual choice, could see the HDD, but would not let me partition/format/or really do anything. It could not mount it, nor did the config tool do anything except let me see that it was there. Not listed in the partition tool. dd would not run because of this (not found).
So, I brought it in to work today -- Win XP found the drive but would not let me partition it. Mandriva saw the drive and would not let me partition it. PCLOS -- same thing. Wondering if the drive was bad, but I plugged it into Vista. It found the drive and all of the data that was copied to it as well. Furthermore, I was able to re-partition the drive so that Mandriva could use dd to clone it.
Clone is still running, however I was surprised that XP/Linux failed to be able to re-partition or even delete a partition when it had a hard time determining it. Vista on the other hand not only found it, but I was able to browse the folders as if the drive was setup properly.

Just thought I would share an interesting, but annoying event. It took 4 systems to try to get the disk re-partitioned from a failed ghost clone. Well 2 actually, the other 2 just did nothing. How friggin SAD is that?

24 replies

by jiminpa

That had to hurt to admit. I'm proud of you Scummy. A lesser man would never have admitted it.

;)

by the scummy one

ditch the new drive. I got it 2 years ago in case of a failure, so I could not take it back.
Oh, and I always give credit where do, even if I do not like what was responsible. However, I was surprised at how much better disk management worked in Vista vs. XP.

by magic8ball

I will say that the disk management is better than XP. On my computer the first drive is an 80GB sata partitioned into 2 40GB drives. I added a new drive for data and using the built in tools was able to resize the first partition after moving the data to the new drive. Now all 80GB is used for the OS and the new drive for the data. Resizing the partition from within the OS was easy and painless.

by oz_media

As JJ said, it takes a man to admit it, especially when normally opposed to Vista.

I am not a Vista fanboy by any means, but I think that it does get an unfair rap and the negative comments are usually coming from someone with no time or patience to try it and work with it.

These people will spend ages tweaking and setting up XP just right to have it work for them as they choose, but Vista is a quick install 'nope don't like it' and that's it, followed by negative comments about what garbage it is. Many feel its trendy and cool to follow the masses afterall.

Glad to hear you got your issue sorted, I was unaware of that benefit, another to add to the list I suppose. I have always stood firm that Vista has better system management, but that usually falls upon deaf ears when talking to XP fanboys.

Another great Vista story, thanks.

by jiminpa

I hated it. It was ugly, I couldn't find anything and it was just plain stupid. How could this pathetic excuse for an OS ever replace Window 3.11 or my beloved Norton Commander?

The only thing constant is change. I wasn't real fond of Vista when it came out either. Still not a big fan of how some things look. But that's just it, looks. I can't judge an OS solely on looks. It seems to work pretty well for the missus. I know this because She is not constantly asking for me for support on it.

by oz_media

Good ole Windows for Workgroups. I managed a large call centre and had every seat 250+ set up on individual IP's runnign to a Davox Unison dialler (an entire room full of BIX racks and punch downs).

The tech, that initialy set it all up, was fired and didn't have ANY records of IP's. so if one went down it was a guessing game as ot the IP. You'd get it all set up and woking, then the evening shift would come in and SOMEONE would get a duplicate IP error, #^&#@(#$.

It took me ages to reconfigrue and map it all out properly, then in came Win95, those BA$TARDS!!!

I too cringed at the thought of Vista, but had no choice at the time. i soon learned ot see the merits and started to play with and tweak it, now it is a pretty good OS, no more or less problematic than XP really, in fact I think its a lot smoother out of the box than XP ever has been.

by michael jay

Vista can be used as a tool, I discovered that last summer with a similar drive problem.

So far I have not found that Vista is really better or worse than XP, just different.

by the scummy one

of constant fighting my system to actually work, the clone took.
Well, it wasnt that easy, after installing the drive Windows wouldnt boot :( It just sat there loading (similar to my last avatar :0 ) at the Win XP screen.
Luckily safe mode worked and a system restore fixed it :)

Well, there actually was another glitch, but hey, it is working now :) :) :) :D :D :D

by rob miners

and if you don't want to enable the built-in administrator account, at least create another user account with admin privelages. You dont have to use this account but it is a handy backdoor when something goes wrong with your profile. I found out the hard way and had to reinstall as there was no way that I could get back in as I didn't have a backdoor.

by michael jay

yes Scummy, make the aministrator account Scummy, with the password Scummy, and post the IP address so's we can mess with you, should be some fun... LOL

by the scummy one

I already have an admin account, + another. No problems logging in when I can get it to boot.

Oh, and for the record, My IP address is 192.168.1.4
come and find me :^0

by the scummy one

if it wasnt for neighbors, I woulda pulled out the shotgun on this friggin thing

So, the only time it will boot is into safe mode or upon a system restore.
But then everything is fine until -- I reboot, then I gotta go into safe mode and do a system restore again

My desktop comes up fine except, at a higher resolution and IE fails to work.

So, I put the old drive in, no problems booting at all, and IE works. However, the desktop background is missing. The picture is not even on the drive, I manually searched and used the search tools several times.
But, the background appears on the clone -- which doesnt boot.
I think I am done with this thing for now, or I may just toss it around the yard.
I swear, I clone drives all the friggin time with less issue, some drives in much worse shape than this. I think I am just gonna let this drive die, if nothing else I have data backed up.

by rob miners

to put your clone back in and boot from the Vista DVD. It should automatically find the startup problems and fix them for you.

by the scummy one

I dont have a Vista cd, just the image at work.

I was thinking bout running chkdsk, but I think I am gonna let this disk die, forget the clone -- just use it as a data backup.
I ordered 2 500GB HDD's from newegg yesterday anyway, I think it's time to install XP from scratch when it goes.
I was trying to avoid re-installing SW, but hey, whatever.
Much less po'd right now, been destroying sh1t with Full Auto game. Ahh -- agression release :D
Funny, everytime something blows up, I see a HDD ?:|

by rob miners

the recovery CD wouldn't do you any good either as you need the real McCoy to run the automated process. Nothing like a fresh install of XP especially on a new hard drive. ;)

by the scummy one

is due to all of the prep right before christmas (at my house). And its a friggin mess around here right now. I wouldnt have time to spend 8+ hours installing and removing stuff.
oh, and trying to remember passwords, and re-activation of stuff, and.........

by Member 19291532

I've had real good luck with OS X reclaiming thumbdrives and memory cards that no other OS can see or format.

One good justification for having multiple platforms around. It makes me wonder how many gigabytes of SD, CF cards, and thumbdrives have been tossed in the garbage when all they needed was a couple minutes in the care of a different OS.

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