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Recovery Disks for Refurbished Computer



 
 
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  #1  
Old December 20th 14, 08:06 PM posted to alt.windows7.general
Johnny
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Posts: 306
Default Recovery Disks for Refurbished Computer



I bought an old computer that was refurbished by U.S. Micro
Corporation, an authorized Microsoft refurbisher.

It came with Windows 7 Professional installed, and I don't see anyway
to make the recovery disks. There is no recovery manager in Programs,
but there is a recovery partition.

Can recovery disks only be made for a new computer?

description: Low Profile Desktop Computer
product: HP Compaq 8000 Elite SFF PC (LC356EP#ABA)
vendor: Hewlett-Packard
width: 64 bits
product: Pentium(R) Dual-Core CPU E6700 @ 3.20GHz
8GiB DIMM DDR3 Synchronous 1333 MHz (0.8 ns)
Ads
  #2  
Old December 20th 14, 08:34 PM posted to alt.windows7.general
Sir_George[_5_]
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Posts: 136
Default Recovery Disks for Refurbished Computer

Johnny wrote:



I bought an old computer that was refurbished by U.S. Micro
Corporation, an authorized Microsoft refurbisher.

It came with Windows 7 Professional installed, and I don't see anyway
to make the recovery disks. There is no recovery manager in Programs,
but there is a recovery partition.

Can recovery disks only be made for a new computer?

description: Low Profile Desktop Computer
product: HP Compaq 8000 Elite SFF PC (LC356EP#ABA)
vendor: Hewlett-Packard
width: 64 bits
product: Pentium(R) Dual-Core CPU E6700 @ 3.20GHz
8GiB DIMM DDR3 Synchronous 1333 MHz (0.8 ns)


I don't know if you can make "recovery disks" from a recovery
partition, but you can make a Windows 7 install disk. The recovery
partition, or a disk created from it, would contain all the bloatware
from the manufacturer. The better alternative is to create an install
disk from the following site;

http://www.mydigitallife.info/offici...digital-river/



--
Sir_George
  #3  
Old December 20th 14, 08:43 PM posted to alt.windows7.general
Mayayana
external usenet poster
 
Posts: 6,438
Default Recovery Disks for Refurbished Computer

This doesn't exactly answer your question, but I'd
suggest you look into disk imaging. With a disk image
you can have a stored copy of your OS after you've
installed software and got it just the way you want
it. Then you can restore that backup at any time
easily. It's a lot easier and more secure (no need
to worry about software disks and activation codes)
than just being able to do a factory restore.

|
|
| I bought an old computer that was refurbished by U.S. Micro
| Corporation, an authorized Microsoft refurbisher.
|
| It came with Windows 7 Professional installed, and I don't see anyway
| to make the recovery disks. There is no recovery manager in Programs,
| but there is a recovery partition.
|
| Can recovery disks only be made for a new computer?
|
| description: Low Profile Desktop Computer
| product: HP Compaq 8000 Elite SFF PC (LC356EP#ABA)
| vendor: Hewlett-Packard
| width: 64 bits
| product: Pentium(R) Dual-Core CPU E6700 @ 3.20GHz
| 8GiB DIMM DDR3 Synchronous 1333 MHz (0.8 ns)


  #4  
Old December 20th 14, 08:56 PM posted to alt.windows7.general
Johnny
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Posts: 306
Default Recovery Disks for Refurbished Computer

On 20 Dec 2014 19:34:08 GMT
"Sir_George" wrote:

Johnny wrote:



I bought an old computer that was refurbished by U.S. Micro
Corporation, an authorized Microsoft refurbisher.

It came with Windows 7 Professional installed, and I don't see
anyway to make the recovery disks. There is no recovery manager in
Programs, but there is a recovery partition.

Can recovery disks only be made for a new computer?

description: Low Profile Desktop Computer
product: HP Compaq 8000 Elite SFF PC (LC356EP#ABA)
vendor: Hewlett-Packard
width: 64 bits
product: Pentium(R) Dual-Core CPU E6700 @ 3.20GHz
8GiB DIMM DDR3 Synchronous 1333 MHz (0.8 ns)


I don't know if you can make "recovery disks" from a recovery
partition, but you can make a Windows 7 install disk. The recovery
partition, or a disk created from it, would contain all the bloatware
from the manufacturer. The better alternative is to create an install
disk from the following site;

http://www.mydigitallife.info/offici...digital-river/




Thanks for that link. I guess as long as I have the product key, I can
activate it.

2.4 GB is small compared to using three DVDs for recovery disks.
  #5  
Old December 20th 14, 09:01 PM posted to alt.windows7.general
Johnny
external usenet poster
 
Posts: 306
Default Recovery Disks for Refurbished Computer

On Sat, 20 Dec 2014 14:43:14 -0500
"Mayayana" wrote:

This doesn't exactly answer your question, but I'd
suggest you look into disk imaging. With a disk image
you can have a stored copy of your OS after you've
installed software and got it just the way you want
it. Then you can restore that backup at any time
easily. It's a lot easier and more secure (no need
to worry about software disks and activation codes)
than just being able to do a factory restore.


I don't plan on using Windows 7. I'm going to remove it, but I wanted
a way to restore the computer to the way it was when I bought it. I
might give it to someone later on.
  #6  
Old December 20th 14, 09:50 PM posted to alt.windows7.general
Paul
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Posts: 18,275
Default Recovery Disks for Refurbished Computer

Johnny wrote:
On Sat, 20 Dec 2014 14:43:14 -0500
"Mayayana" wrote:

This doesn't exactly answer your question, but I'd
suggest you look into disk imaging. With a disk image
you can have a stored copy of your OS after you've
installed software and got it just the way you want
it. Then you can restore that backup at any time
easily. It's a lot easier and more secure (no need
to worry about software disks and activation codes)
than just being able to do a factory restore.


I don't plan on using Windows 7. I'm going to remove it, but I wanted
a way to restore the computer to the way it was when I bought it. I
might give it to someone later on.


If you have any concerns about the functionality of
the U.S. Micro Corporation setup, image the entire
disk with Macrium Reflect Free, or with your copy of
Acronis True Image. (Seagate and Western Digital offer
a version of Acronis, which operates only on their
branded hard drives, so you don't even have to pay
to try out some Acronis-written stuff.)

Both of those, when you install the software, they
have you make a "recovery CD". That's a boot CD that
runs the computer while you're doing either a backup
or a restore. It allows treating the internal hard
drive as a "data disk", while you're backing it up.
The CD is essential when restoring to a new blank
hard drive, but the CD optionally can be used to
do the backup too.

Both software products are likely to use "intelligent
copying" when preparing the image. If the C: partition
is 320GB and the C: contents are only 20GB, then the
image will be 20GB. So only the occupied spaces get
copied. The MBR should be copied, as well as the first
track or so (for GRUB if it was present).

Now, once you've made the image, you can compress it.
I use 7-ZIP .7Z compression, Ultra setting, and that
can take a day on a slow computer, to compress the results.

So when you make the large image file, you turn off
compression in Macrium, with the understanding you will
be applying a compression step as the last step. This
will reduce the final storage space needed.

That approach is not practical for nearly-full source
disks, due to the amount of scratch space you need to
process the image files later. If you barely have enough
space to hold an image, then by all means select the
aggressive compression setting within the backup tool,
and don't bother with a better compression tool later.

For a well-established OEM computer brand, they have you burn
a set of three DVDs (made from the unlabeled 12GB recovery
partition on the hard drive). Which is sufficient to do a factory
restore later. The DVDs would have about 4GB each or so. You
could image those DVDs, after they're burned, and keep
the files on a hard drive. That's the most compact way
possible, to save the software for later. But I'm
recommending the more pessimistic above procedure,
because nothing in your description suggests the
U.S. Micro Corporation collection is well curated.
If in doubt, "back it all up" :-) Maybe their software
is just C:, and nothing to recover with. You never know.

*******

Macrium is available here. About a 150MB download, of
which 110MB is used for preparing a boot CD.

CNET download, lower left corner, for WinXP or later.
WinXP or later required, if you expect VSS to work.
Will also do everything, from the recovery CD they make
for you. For this job, I'd make and boot the recovery
CD, as that doubles as a test case that the recovery
CD boots the computer. There is no guarantee (like on
UEFI machines), that the recovery CD will work, so always
test it so you know it works OK.

http://www.macrium.com/reflectfree.aspx

Paul
  #7  
Old December 20th 14, 11:23 PM posted to alt.windows7.general
Johnny
external usenet poster
 
Posts: 306
Default Recovery Disks for Refurbished Computer

On Sat, 20 Dec 2014 15:50:53 -0500
Paul wrote:

I don't plan on using Windows 7. I'm going to remove it, but I
wanted a way to restore the computer to the way it was when I
bought it. I might give it to someone later on.


If you have any concerns about the functionality of
the U.S. Micro Corporation setup, image the entire
disk with Macrium Reflect Free, or with your copy of
Acronis True Image. (Seagate and Western Digital offer
a version of Acronis, which operates only on their
branded hard drives, so you don't even have to pay
to try out some Acronis-written stuff.)

Both of those, when you install the software, they
have you make a "recovery CD". That's a boot CD that
runs the computer while you're doing either a backup
or a restore. It allows treating the internal hard
drive as a "data disk", while you're backing it up.
The CD is essential when restoring to a new blank
hard drive, but the CD optionally can be used to
do the backup too.

Both software products are likely to use "intelligent
copying" when preparing the image. If the C: partition
is 320GB and the C: contents are only 20GB, then the
image will be 20GB. So only the occupied spaces get
copied. The MBR should be copied, as well as the first
track or so (for GRUB if it was present).

Now, once you've made the image, you can compress it.
I use 7-ZIP .7Z compression, Ultra setting, and that
can take a day on a slow computer, to compress the results.

So when you make the large image file, you turn off
compression in Macrium, with the understanding you will
be applying a compression step as the last step. This
will reduce the final storage space needed.

That approach is not practical for nearly-full source
disks, due to the amount of scratch space you need to
process the image files later. If you barely have enough
space to hold an image, then by all means select the
aggressive compression setting within the backup tool,
and don't bother with a better compression tool later.

For a well-established OEM computer brand, they have you burn
a set of three DVDs (made from the unlabeled 12GB recovery
partition on the hard drive). Which is sufficient to do a factory
restore later. The DVDs would have about 4GB each or so. You
could image those DVDs, after they're burned, and keep
the files on a hard drive. That's the most compact way
possible, to save the software for later. But I'm
recommending the more pessimistic above procedure,
because nothing in your description suggests the
U.S. Micro Corporation collection is well curated.
If in doubt, "back it all up" :-) Maybe their software
is just C:, and nothing to recover with. You never know.


Thanks for the reply.

I have been reading the HP forums, and it seems other people have the
same problem. Some computers just don't have the Recovery Manager
program installed.

In one of the messages I read, there was a link provided to a patch
that would restore the missing Recovery Manager, but I couldn't find it.

I'm going to keep looking for that patch for awhile, and if I can't
find it, I will probably just use that Windows 7 iso that Sir George
recommended. It's only 2.4 GB.
  #8  
Old December 20th 14, 11:36 PM posted to alt.windows7.general
philo [_3_]
external usenet poster
 
Posts: 984
Default Recovery Disks for Refurbished Computer

On 12/20/2014 02:01 PM, Johnny wrote:
On Sat, 20 Dec 2014 14:43:14 -0500
"Mayayana" wrote:

This doesn't exactly answer your question, but I'd
suggest you look into disk imaging. With a disk image
you can have a stored copy of your OS after you've
installed software and got it just the way you want
it. Then you can restore that backup at any time
easily. It's a lot easier and more secure (no need
to worry about software disks and activation codes)
than just being able to do a factory restore.


I don't plan on using Windows 7. I'm going to remove it, but I wanted
a way to restore the computer to the way it was when I bought it. I
might give it to someone later on.




Nothing could be easier.

Remove the drive and put in a new one. A new 1TB drive is about $50
Then load whatever OS you want.


If you later want to give it away, just put the original drive back in.
Should the machine simply go to the recyclers you can use the drive
elsewhere
  #9  
Old December 20th 14, 11:42 PM posted to alt.windows7.general
mike[_10_]
external usenet poster
 
Posts: 1,073
Default Recovery Disks for Refurbished Computer

On 12/20/2014 2:23 PM, Johnny wrote:


In one of the messages I read, there was a link provided to a patch
that would restore the missing Recovery Manager, but I couldn't find it.

I'm going to keep looking for that patch for awhile, and if I can't
find it, I will probably just use that Windows 7 iso that Sir George
recommended. It's only 2.4 GB.

Only works if you have an existing recovery partition...which you may not.
I can't find the link, but the text sez:
As anybody who has ever worked on a plethora of HP computers (and needed
to set them up for clients) knows HP only allows for the creation of one
set of Recovery Discs per computer. This means that if you’ve lost yours
or if they became damaged you’re pretty much screwed.

Well until now.

This tweak has been on the net (whispered) for some time but I give it
to you in the form of a handy batch file. What this file will do is
delete the following two files:

c:\windows\sminst\hpcd.sys
d:\hpcd.sys

What that will do is reset the counter that HP computers use to track
Recovery Disc creation. You’ll be able to create recovery discs over and
over again. Awesome right?

Another link says there are two instances of hpcd.sys and both need to
be removed.
  #10  
Old December 21st 14, 07:14 AM posted to alt.windows7.general
GlowingBlueMist[_6_]
external usenet poster
 
Posts: 378
Default Recovery Disks for Refurbished Computer

On 12/20/2014 1:06 PM, Johnny wrote:


I bought an old computer that was refurbished by U.S. Micro
Corporation, an authorized Microsoft refurbisher.

It came with Windows 7 Professional installed, and I don't see anyway
to make the recovery disks. There is no recovery manager in Programs,
but there is a recovery partition.

Can recovery disks only be made for a new computer?

description: Low Profile Desktop Computer
product: HP Compaq 8000 Elite SFF PC (LC356EP#ABA)
vendor: Hewlett-Packard
width: 64 bits
product: Pentium(R) Dual-Core CPU E6700 @ 3.20GHz
8GiB DIMM DDR3 Synchronous 1333 MHz (0.8 ns)

Since you don't plan to use the Operating System that came with the PC
but want the option of restoring it to an "as is" status later one of
the easiest things to do would be to remove the hard drive and plug in
an empty one and let your new software start from scratch with the new
drive. Then box up the old drive and label it in such a way as to
remind you what is in it for later re-installation.

Drives for use in your model are relatively cheap at this time,
depending on the size you want to get, if you spend a little time
visiting sites like tigerdirect.com or newegg.com to name a couple.
  #11  
Old December 21st 14, 10:34 PM posted to alt.windows7.general
Char Jackson
external usenet poster
 
Posts: 10,449
Default Recovery Disks for Refurbished Computer

On Sat, 20 Dec 2014 15:50:53 -0500, Paul wrote:

(Seagate and Western Digital offer
a version of Acronis, which operates only on their
branded hard drives, so you don't even have to pay
to try out some Acronis-written stuff.)


The way that's written could lead to misinterpretation because the literal
translation is not true.

The branded versions of Acronis work on any system that has at least one of
their drives installed. Given a Seagate-branded version of Acronis and a
system containing a Seagate drive and a Samsung drive, the Seagate-branded
program will work fine on the Samsung drive.

My desktop system has a WD system drive and 15 Samsung data drives. The
WD-branded version of Acronis works fine on any of the drives because it
finds a qualifying drive during program start.

--

Char Jackson
  #12  
Old December 22nd 14, 12:56 PM posted to alt.windows7.general
Paul
external usenet poster
 
Posts: 18,275
Default Recovery Disks for Refurbished Computer

Char Jackson wrote:
On Sat, 20 Dec 2014 15:50:53 -0500, Paul wrote:

(Seagate and Western Digital offer
a version of Acronis, which operates only on their
branded hard drives, so you don't even have to pay
to try out some Acronis-written stuff.)


The way that's written could lead to misinterpretation because the literal
translation is not true.

The branded versions of Acronis work on any system that has at least one of
their drives installed. Given a Seagate-branded version of Acronis and a
system containing a Seagate drive and a Samsung drive, the Seagate-branded
program will work fine on the Samsung drive.

My desktop system has a WD system drive and 15 Samsung data drives. The
WD-branded version of Acronis works fine on any of the drives because it
finds a qualifying drive during program start.


In one of my tests, I encountered resistance, so I have
to mention the disk branding issue, so people know what
to expect. I have both WD and Seagate drives on the
system, and some operation I was trying to do, was stopped.
I'm not going back and doing a test matrix... Too boring.

It could have been when I was trying to install Capacity Manager.
I was using the Seagate version, and was trying to do Capacity
Manager on a 3TB WD drive. I think I had to install the WD
version, to get it to work. Capacity Manager is the software
that converts a 3TB drive, into a 2TB physical drive and
a 1TB virtual drive. So one disk, creates two entries in
Disk Management. It's a software solution for using 2.2TB
drives on WinXP (no GPT support). The upper partition can be
mounted on Linux, so you can pretend it's a "cross platform"
solution. Linux does not automatically detect the partition,
but it can still be mounted and used.

The Capacity Manager is just the software that writes 256KB
of metadata onto the drive, between the 2TB and 1TB chunks.
Once a drive has been "prepped", there is no branding issue
after that. Acronis makes the "driver" portion of Capacity
Manager, a separate file from their site. Once a drive is
prepped, you just install the driver file on any other
OS where you want to view all the disk contents.
(I prepped the drive on WinXP, installed the driver package
on Win8, and could view both sections on the Win8 setup.)

Paul
  #13  
Old December 22nd 14, 04:55 PM posted to alt.windows7.general
Char Jackson
external usenet poster
 
Posts: 10,449
Default Recovery Disks for Refurbished Computer

On Mon, 22 Dec 2014 06:56:31 -0500, Paul wrote:

Char Jackson wrote:
On Sat, 20 Dec 2014 15:50:53 -0500, Paul wrote:

(Seagate and Western Digital offer
a version of Acronis, which operates only on their
branded hard drives, so you don't even have to pay
to try out some Acronis-written stuff.)


The way that's written could lead to misinterpretation because the literal
translation is not true.

The branded versions of Acronis work on any system that has at least one of
their drives installed. Given a Seagate-branded version of Acronis and a
system containing a Seagate drive and a Samsung drive, the Seagate-branded
program will work fine on the Samsung drive.

My desktop system has a WD system drive and 15 Samsung data drives. The
WD-branded version of Acronis works fine on any of the drives because it
finds a qualifying drive during program start.


In one of my tests, I encountered resistance, so I have
to mention the disk branding issue, so people know what
to expect.


Agreed, but if they run into a situation where they have a qualifying drive
in the system but it still complains, then that's not normal.

I have both WD and Seagate drives on the
system, and some operation I was trying to do, was stopped.
I'm not going back and doing a test matrix... Too boring.


Agreed.

It could have been when I was trying to install Capacity Manager.


I'm glad I never had to deal with that.

--

Char Jackson
  #14  
Old December 22nd 14, 04:56 PM posted to alt.windows7.general
mechanic
external usenet poster
 
Posts: 1,064
Default Recovery Disks for Refurbished Computer

On Sat, 20 Dec 2014 15:50:53 -0500, Paul wrote:

Seagate and Western Digital offer a version of Acronis, which
operates only on their branded hard drives, so you don't even
have to pay to try out some Acronis-written stuff.


The WD version at least doesn't demand a WD hard drive, it's happy
with a USB WD disk which I use to store the images, even though my
hard drive isn't WD. It complains initially that it can't see a WD
drive, but gets on with the job when the WD USB disk is plugged in.
  #15  
Old December 23rd 14, 12:38 AM posted to alt.windows7.general
Char Jackson
external usenet poster
 
Posts: 10,449
Default Recovery Disks for Refurbished Computer

On Mon, 22 Dec 2014 15:56:12 +0000, mechanic wrote:

On Sat, 20 Dec 2014 15:50:53 -0500, Paul wrote:

Seagate and Western Digital offer a version of Acronis, which
operates only on their branded hard drives, so you don't even
have to pay to try out some Acronis-written stuff.


The WD version at least doesn't demand a WD hard drive, it's happy
with a USB WD disk which I use to store the images, even though my
hard drive isn't WD. It complains initially that it can't see a WD
drive, but gets on with the job when the WD USB disk is plugged in.


That's how it's supposed to work. It should complain when it can't see it's
own brand, and it should stop complaining when it does see it's own brand.

--

Char Jackson
 




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