[conspire] Replacement Computer Was: 3rd Master Hard Disk Error

[paulz at ieee.org]

The air is clear, and my data has been backed up, so I can re-think my situation.  The only "urgency" is if a Black Friday special is something to consider.





I really preferLinux, but there are a handful programs that I want/need that only onWindows: tax software, some engineering packages. Nothing thatneeds the latest version of Windows. Generally I focus on that oneactivity. 

I’ve used WINE,but it hasn’t been reliable. For example, upgrading Debian seemsto break it.

Quite a while ago,we decided the choices for multiple OS are:

1 Install Win 7 orolder. Then install Debian. At the end, the installer sees windowsand installs dual boot.

2 Win 8 and neweruse UEFI. Not compatible with GRUB. What I did was get big USBdrive to install Debian. Fuss with BIOS to allow enable Legacy Boot. I still have to press F12 to manually select the loader.

3 IF you haveinstall media for Win, first install Linux, then virtualizationsoftware, and run Windows in a virtual machine. Rick likesvirtualization. Makers of new computers generally don’t includethe install media.

As discussed indifferent email, my vintage machine has multiple hard drives.  The bad drive has the Linux root partition. The old, but working, drives have the windows OS, so I couldsimply buy a new SATA drive and re-install Debian per #1.

I also was wondering about Windows recommending a back up. Re-thinking, I realize that a lot of MS offers to help arejust “feel goods”. Like the pop-up that says I have a high-speedUSB device in a low-speed port and offering to find a fasterconnection. It searches, says none found. Then opens the samepop-up 5 minutes later. Same for the one that says that the disk(partition) is full, but “cleanup” has already been done.

There are probably better save and recovery choices.

Back to hardwareoptions:

A. While I have thebox open, replace the mother board and get newer CPU. After a bit ofresearch, there are so many options that should go someplace likeCentral Computer or Zareason or ??? to make sure all of the piecesare compatible. 

B. Buy assembledlaptop or desktop. Expect that the MSRP for a laptop should be morethan a desktop. 

If it wasn’t BlackFriday, I would just get a SATA drive. Maybe I can find a gooddiscount on a machine that is just old enough to have good Linuxsupport. Other emails recommended getting a chip set that is abouta year old.


























    On Wednesday, November 21, 2018, 7:37:41 PM PST, Rick Moen <rick at linuxmafia.com> wrote:  
 
 Quoting Paul Zander (paulz at ieee.org):


... deleted discussion of disk diagnostics.

If memory serves, there is a fairly easy way to create an optical disc
image housing the contents of the 'recovery partition', so that you have
at least that half-measure reinstallation software on something tht
won't go 'Pfft!' if the hard drive fails.  Of course, the time and
trouble and (tiny) expense of burning the DVD is on you, and only an
insignificant percentage of MS-Windows users think to do so -- before
the hard drive fails or becomes unreliable, at which point, oops, it's
too late.

What is a 'recovery' image or partition?  This is a deliberately
reduced-functionality MS-Windows installer that offers no installation
options, e.g., doesn't permit you to state how to partition the target
hard drive and which existing partitions to leave alone.  Instead, IIRC,
it blows away 100% of the existing contents and all filesystems on the
target drive and reconstructs the hard drive contents exactly the way
the hard drive was partitioned and loaded by the OEM.  This means the
'recovery' installer will blow away alternative-OS contents on that
drive, and will reinstall MS-Windows 7 plus all of the 'ratware'
third-party junk and advertising that the OEM accepted money to throw
into the bundle.


More of what you really didn't want to hear:  When your PC was
brand-new, it was strongly in your interest to stop and think:  'Where's
my off-system means of reinstalling the operating system and (any)
bundled software?  I.e., where's my master installation copy of the
software I'm paying for?'  Any time you pay for proprietary software, 
you're supposed to receive a reinstallable master copy, either on an
optical disc (sometimes with an activation code), or possibly as a
downloadable installable set of file (sometimes with an activation
code).  This being something you paid to acquire, and knowing that
accidents happen to computers (including but not limited to failing hard
drives and malware), you make sure you have the complete means to
reinstall that software from scratch tucked away somewhere off-system,
right?  Like on a DVD scrawled with the activation code (if any) in
Sharpie on the front?

So, where's your offsystem installable copy of MS-Windows 7, the OS 
you paid for as part of your once-new PC?  What is your plan of action
when, not if, the hard drive it's OEM-installed onto fails?

It boggles me, still, to this day, but your average MS-Windows user 
never planned for this -- and so is completely unaware that he/she has
been totally screwed over.

Maybe I'm wrong in the above guess.  Maybe you, Paul Zander, have a
proper retail copy of MS-Windows 7, acquired separately from your PC,
with required activation code, sitting in a ziplock bag in your office.
But the smart money's on 'Gee, I don't have that.'

If the latter, what do you do?  Personally, I am firmly of the view
that, if you don't have a fully installable master copy of your software 
(or at least the ability to acquire one quickly), then you don't
_really_ own it, because you're one hardware fault away from losing it 
completely.

As I see it:

1.  You could go buy MS-Windows 7.  Again.  And maybe make sure it isn't 
a restricted 'recovery disc' or such.

2.  You could decide you've had enough of awful compromises and abusive
customer relationships, and go open source.  (I said farewell to
Microsoft operating systems on my computers for good around 1992.
For me, the last straw was when MS-Windows for Workgroups 3.11
hard-froze while I was copy-editing articles for _Blue Notes_ magazine,
the 40 page monthly newsletter of San Francisco PC User Group,  My 
copy-editing session were a pair of DOS sessions running shareware ASCII
editor QEdit on several files that I had been frequently updating to a
floppy disk.  However, upon reboot, I found that not only had I lost the
contents of the QEdit buffers in RAM (no big loss), but also that
Windows for Workgroups had rewritten the edited files on-disck to zero
length, destroying hours of saved work.

That was it.  I was done.  That machine got reloaded with the beta of
OS/2 2.0 the same day, and then converted over to Linux a couple of
years later.

3.  Work with the terrible hand you've been dealt.

If you can still boot that hard drive (which I believe you said you
can?), then perhaps you can (at least) create a 'recovery disc' on
optical media.  That sucks, but it's way better than nothing.  Or
perhaps you already have such an optical disc.  I wasn't clear on that
from your very fragmentary description.

If your PC came with a 'recovery partition', then it's probably fairly
easy to poke around and figure out how to use it.  Usually, this
involves pressing F8 or something like that during POST, bringing up a
menu of bootable targets.  One is probably labelled something like
'Repair Your Computer' or something of that sort.  If so, that's the
recovery partition.  I would guess that it's perfeclty safe to boot that
partition to look around, i.e., I would guess that you are asked to give
confirmation before the 'recovery' installer blows away everything and
overwrites the hard drive.  Suggest you explore that.

Inside MS-Windows 7 itself, I see alleged on the Web that there's a
built-in utility (Start menu, Back up and Restore, Create a System
Image) where you can request that the contents of the recovery partition
be burned / copied to somewhere.

Once you have, say, your 'recovery' image stored bootably on an optical
disc or a spare external hard drive, or someting like that, you can
experiment with it to see if you can trick it into doing something
useful.  Like, for example, you could create a virtual machine inside
VirtualBox, then make the VM boot the 'recovery' installer, and let it
do a 'recovery' installation entirely within the VM -- writing only to
the VM's virtual disk file, not to the host OS's hard drive(s).  The
beauty of VM technology is that all software running there gets lied to
and told 'No, you have full control of an actual real computer.  You're
not running in a simulation. Trust me[tm].'  Such a Win7 installation 
would then doubtless squawk about needing 'product activation'.  So, I
guess at that point you telephone Microsoft's telephone line for
activation, say you've moved Win7 into a VM, and badger them into
helping you.  Scuttlebutt says they're not unreasonable about this.

(This was one of your questions above, so this is my verbose way of 
saying 'Yeah, at least one variant on your idea might well be a plan.')

Of course, in the alternative, maybe you imagine that you ought to
somehow back up the current exact state of your MS-Windows 7
installation including installed applications and somewhat ratty and
worse-for-the-wear Registry -- and then do a corresponding restore
operation later.  I personally think this is a tactical error, for
multiple reasons including MS-Window's tendency to accumulate bobbles
over time that are best dealt with by (infrequent) from-scratch
reinstallation of the OS, then from-scratch reinstallation of
applications, then re-creation of application configuration, then
restoration of user data files.

But, if you're feeling lucky and prefer to back up and later restore the
current exact state of your MS-Windows 7 installation including
installed applications, I'm sure you can somehow do that, possibly with
bundled backup/restore software, possibly with third-party software from
any of the cheerful publishers of proprietary MS-Windows utilities
standing by happy to accept your money.

Or, third alternative, there are ways to create _directly_ a virtual
disk image of your exact, literal, MS-Windows partition, for use under
VMware or VirtualBox.  This notion has been the subject of discussion
within the year on this mailing list, so, if interested, let me know and
I can dredge up Mailman archive links to the relevant back postings.
(Or, you know, you could research that yourself.  I don't have any magic
for finding such things.)


Disclaimer:  Although I'm confident what I say in relation to Windows 7
is correct in broad outline at least, you are solemnly advised to verify
particulars before follwing the advise of someone who gave MS-Windows
the heave-ho in disgust more than a quarter-century ago.


(A propos of nothing in particular, I'm pleased to note that QEdit's
current incarnation as The SemWare Editor = TSE is still around for
MS-DOS, OS/2, and MS-Windows users.  It was nice.)

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