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Want to try Vista, but...
Hello Everyone,
When I first purchased my Dimension 9200, Vista had not been released. Dell offered the Vista upgrade media for free and loaded XP on the system. Well - 2 years later and I'm still on XP :) I would like to give Vista a shake because I understand that Windows 7 will have the same feel but be a much more improved version. I figure if I try Vista it will get me used to the new layouts. Now here's my "problem"...
I have used the XP recovery partition on the system about 4 times and it saves so much time from re-doing a system from scratch. My daughter messed up the system 4 times in a 1 1/2 to 2 month stratch and I found the recovery partition to be worth it's weight in gold, simply for the fact that all the system's hardware gets drivers automatically. Is there a way to copy/backup the recovery partition so that in the event that I really do not care for Vista or have more problems than it is worth I can restore the HDD to my previous XP installation? I do not know how to get to the hidden partition to do it. If I used Ghost or another imaging software to image the entire HDD - would the hidden partition get copied too?
Any and all info would be awesome - Thank you in advance,
Grant
jackshack
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January 15th, 2009 12:00
The only way I know for certain to keep the Dell restore partition working is to clone the drive so that everything, including the special Dell MBR, gets copied to the new disk. However, if you study Dan Goodell's page, Inside the Dell PC Restore Partition, you should learn enough to have a chance at duplicating the feature.
TKDragon
34 Posts
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January 16th, 2009 07:00
Jack,
Thanks for the link. I'll take a look at it.
Are you on Vista? How do you like it?
Grant
jackshack
6.4K Posts
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January 16th, 2009 11:00
I'm not running Vista, though my son does have a laptop that does. I don't find it a great deal different from Windows XP, except for the additional security features. These sort of get in the way on occasion, but I'm sure if I was using it daily I would get to the point that I wouldn't notice it.
TKDragon
34 Posts
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January 16th, 2009 12:00
I bought an Inspiron 1501 for my Mother about a year or so ago and it has Vista on it. If it weren't for the "show me this" or "fix that" I wouldn't see Vista at all. Every other PC I use has XP on it.
What do you think about Windows 7? I'm considering d'loading it and trying it on my other PC to take a look at that one.
Cheers,
Grant
jackshack
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January 16th, 2009 14:00
I haven't looked at Windows 7 at all, but the few people I know who have installed it seem to love it. It seems to work significantly faster than Vista.
EYE-T
2 Posts
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February 17th, 2010 12:00
Im currently running trails on this much confusing problem, testing out weather acer's Erecovery will run on non acer machines.. acer like dell use many different boards and proccesser configurations so I dont really see why It wouldnt work, and its Free to use and easy to get hold of... I will post my results soon but only for XP and 7 as vista is like win ME not really a finished product and was probly just intended as a bridge till 7 was finished
as per your test vista idear... you would be better of going straight to 7 as the whole layout of 7 is very different though there are eliments of vista in it !
desktop system
amd athlon X2 6000+ Abit NV940-1.2 ATI raddion 3870
laptop: Dell vostro 1000 turion 64 x2 at 2gig , ATI raddion x1150 3 gig crucial 566
EYE-T
2 Posts
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March 1st, 2010 13:00
after trying my theories... it seems to long winded, you could use acer Erovery but ! you need to find the right tool as the use different ones for diffrent machines and as there are that many acer products find the right one is a pain in the rear... some load but on recovery freeze, or corrupt data some just freeze your computer on setup and laugh out loud at you for trying ... so yeah... I wouldnt bother
desktop system amd athlon X2 64 6000+ Abit NV940-1.2 ATI raddion 3870 , 3 gig crucial ddr800
laptop: Dell vostro 1000 turion 64 x2 at 2gig , ATI raddion x1150 , 3 gig crucial ddr566