Be careful with newer Dells

[gogeeta13]

Shiva112,
If you want a nice custom system, so it your self, or intrust one of us on this board to do it. I have a computer business on the side where i mainly do service, but lately I have been building many, many systems because I can no longer recommend any of the OEM's. As for laptops, there is no way you can beat the price of Dell or IBM. There ARE ways around the hidden partition though. You can buy the lappy with a small hdd, then go out any buy your own, new, one. Good Luck!

 

[bigbootydaddy]

<< Come to think of it I don't even think I've seen WinME OEM discs. >>


there are corporate editions where you dont have to register, that is all i have seen (have)



<< Here's another reason to stay away from Dell. They include a &quot;recovery&quot; cd.
Basically, if you need to restore your system, you put in the recovery cd which checks the hardware to make sure you aren't trying to install windows on another machine. Guess what? If you upgrade the hard drive, you can't use the recovery cd, you have to BUY another copy of windows. Congratulations, welcome to the world of Windows OEM licensing. >>


i thought it was the mobo it checked since only dell PSU will operate a dell mobo..(intel i8xx). althought this might be true about the hdd since maxtor drives that come with dells actually have &quot;dell&quot; in one of the serial numbers, and those are deteccted by ide/scsi cards.



<< There ARE ways around the hidden partition though. You can buy the lappy with a small hdd, then go out any buy your own, new, one. Good Luck! >>


Yes, in theory (has anyone done this?) you could swap out HDD and the ghost thing is gone for good. On my dell p3 933 xbs or something, i took the hdd with me when i bought a abit board, but had to RMA the HDD a month later, so im assuming i didnt have the ghost.

I am reviving the dell and will know since i have to buy it a HDD.
anyone wanna sell me a 20 giger cheap?

edit: typos

 

[Kwad Guy]

acronym:

The scenario you describe, where the restore disc checks for
a secret watermark on the hard drive, is precisely the reason I
backup the entire system before ever booting into Windows (not
even once)...(See my post above). If you backup the system using
Drive Image or Ghost before you boot into Windows, then you can
use that image as your restore disc any time you need to restore
the computer, regardless of whether you're wiped/replaced the
hard drive...

Words of wisdom from someone who went down the wrong road ONCE
in this regard...

Kwad

 

[kingz]

Kwad, thanks for the great information. ill keep that in mind if i ever get that inspiron 8000

 

[Nikepete]

My Dell Latitude C600 came with a single 20 GB NTFS partition, Win2K and no CD-writer. I guess the only way to back up the OS is to low-level format, re-partition and re-install the whole thing. Smart !!

 

[xyion]

I wish I knew about this before I ordered my new dell.

can somebody please tell me how to &quot;low level format&quot;

thanks

- xyion

 

[GregMal]

If you buy a system from NuTrend I believe they give you the full
OEM OS with CD and docs. I believe you can get Win98SE instead of
ME also!!!
Greg

 

[LostHiWay]

I've worked on quite a few relatives computers that only have Restore discs. Most of the time if you dig through the restore cd you can eventually find the Windows Install files. On my Toshiba laptop they were in a directory in a zip file that was password protected. I just d/l'd a zip password cracker, got the files out of the zip, and burned the Windows setup files to a cdr.

If the restore cd only has an image file on it, most image readers like WinImage will let you open it and extract stuff out.

 

[ProviaFan]

With my computer parts I got a Windows 2000 Professional CD that says &quot;For distribution with a new PC only&quot;. It came with only a small book attached, and it wasn't in a box. I guess this is an OEM Windows 2000 CD. So they do exist, at least in small numbers.

 

[Kwad Guy]

Nikepete:

Boot with a diskette version of Partition Magic and create
a second partition large enough to hold an image of the installed
OS. Then boot with a diskette version of Drive Image and
create the image on the newly created partition. Then boot your
laptop and burn the image to CDs using a USB or firewire or
SCSI external CD writer (or transfer to another computer via
ethernet).

Kwad

 

[Wingznut]

Keep in mind what Dell's target consumer is. I'll bet that an overwhelming majority of Dell's customers have never heard of &quot;partitioning the hd.&quot; And for these people, Dell's solution is a good one.

That being said, there's something just not right about not giving a Windows cd with the PC imho.

 

[jepritchett]

First of all burn a copy of C:\windows\options\install - this contains the full install of whatever OS your machine came loaded with (at least for win ME, may be C:\windows\options\cabs for 98) and doesn't contain all the extra crap they put on the recovery disk. I tested this on a friend Gateway machine that he didn't get an actual copy of Windows. They also don't give you the &quot;CD Key&quot;, you only get a Authenticity card with a &quot;Product-ID&quot; which isn't the key you're asked for when isntalling Windows. To get the key needed for your copy of windows check in your registery under &quot;HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion and look for the entry labeled &quot;ProductKey&quot;, this will be your actual CD Key you're prompted for during the Windows installed (you're not asked for this when installing via recovery CD hence they don't give it to you).

Now the part about getting rid of any &quot;ghost partitions&quot;. Just do a search on the net for a program called &quot;wdclear.exe&quot;. This is a low level formatting tool made for western digital hard drives but works with any brand drive you may have. Make a bootable floppy and put wdclear.exe on it, run it from a dos prompt, and your drive will be competely bare. Then reboot, create partitions using fdisk, and format. Now you're ready to use the CD you burned earlier as described above. After doing so you should have a basic install of windows and your own copy of the base OS.

Hope this helps,

Justin

 

[CQuinn]

Okay, what the Dell tech rep told you doesn't sound correct. The Ghost partition isn't
there to keep you from repartitioning the Hard Drive. It was proabably the Recovery Image
needed to restore the system to factory defaults. The image was saved on a partition
with a partition ID that FDISK does not recognize, because they didn't want any
Joe Blow coming along and hosing the system.

Guys the recovery disk is the legal equivalent of the full OEM.
The OEM license requires that they give you the cab files (in case Windows needs to
reinstall drivers or components), and a means to reinstall the system to the
factory defaults. The OEMs started doing this long before MS got into the picture.
It has been easier for them to support, and they don't have to shell out extra for
CDs and packaging of Disks.

You're right that Dell could have created more partitions for the drive, but then
they'd get support calls like this:

=====
Customer: I got a defective machine, I only see 25Gig on my C drive when I was
supposed to have 60.

Tech: Yes sir, for your convenience we partitioned the machine at the factory into
30 Gigabyte drives, the remaining 5Gig is the OS and applications that you purchased
with the system.

Customer: I didn't ask for two drives, I wanted the 60Gig advertised in that PC-whatsit
magazine I ordered from you.

Tech: You did get the 60Gig drive sir, that's just the way we organize it for you.

Customer: Thats false advertising, let me speak to your supervisor!

... and so on.

=====

I can guarantee that Dell would get more complaints from customers who are &quot;missing&quot;
hard drive space that they'd never fill in the first place, than from customers
complaining about having 50+ Gigabytes free on their new computer.

Before you stop recommending Dell, you should realize that all the big box manufacturers
do the same thing in one form or another. Microsoft made it an &quot;official&quot; practice for
OEMs in late '99, early 2000; but most of the big name companies were already creating
their own Recovery CDs and hard drive installs. So don't blame MS, half of this was
them bending over to the requests of the big box makers in the first place.

Shiva112, I believe you can still get OEM disks for WinME and Win2000, but they are
very rare. Most will come with something like the MSDN subscription, where developers
might need a separate install of various OS versions. OEMs nowadays are getting
the OPK (OEM Preinstallation Kit), which lets them set up the OEM install with
all the configuration options they need (additional drivers, support apps, background
screens, etc.), and save that off as a branded recovery image.

If you can build your own, then you can also figure out how to work around the issues
of the hidden partitions and recovery CDs create for more advanced users. The
regular users won't even notice a difference.

I'm not disagreeing with what you are saying in this thread, but most of you are
bitching because you know how to build and change the systems yourselves, and don't
seem to realize that these solutions were made for the millions of other customers
who hardly know the first thing about using the mouse, let alone repartitioning
and or replacing the hard drive.

IMO FDISK should only be used in extreme emergencies by computer experts; there are
too many easier to use partitioning utilities out there (some are even free) that won't
crap out the system like FDISK does.

acromym, what you state may not be accurate either. Each OEM was given the option of
creating their own recovery process. So there is no way to say what hardware it checks
against, BUT most would not check against the Hard Drive or any other easily upgradable
part of the system - because they expect those to change and be different even on the
factory builds before they go out to the customers. What it most likely checks against
are parts of the system that don't change out on a standard upgrade. So if you replace
the whole motherboard then it might become a problem; but that would probably also
void the license you purchased with the machine (read the fine print).

Kwad Guy makes an excellent point. Utilities like Partition Magic, Drive Image, and Ghost
would probably also be able to see and back up the hidden partition in case that could
become an issue on later recoverys. In some cases those were the utilities used to
create the recovery image in the first place.

NikePete, you can always get an external CD-Writer or external Hard Drive to back up to.

 

[Maverick]

Well I know OEMs do this stuff to make things easier from a customer support standpoint.
And I can see that there are ways to get around the ghost partition.

But I think the claim that customers will complain is invalid. I'm not saying Dell should partition drives in this way or that way, but that they should give the customer the option to do so. The least they could do is include a little program to get rid of the ghost partition. They could slap all kinds of warnings on the directions, even void the warranty, but they shouldn't cripple the machine so you can't do it. Thats like selling someone a car and crippling it so if they change the tape deck to a cd deck, the car won't start.

Remember back in the day when Packard Bells were best sellers? They had this little piece of metallic tape on the back of the case that was supposed to keep you from opening your computer. If you pulled it off and opened your case, it voided your warranty. These days no manufacturer in their right mind would do that since people add everything from home networking to cd-writers to firewire cards. Maybe with enough pressure the &quot;ghost partition&quot; will go away too.

 

[ElFenix]

<< Remember back in the day when Packard Bells were best sellers? They had this little piece of metallic tape on the back of the case that was supposed to keep you from opening your computer. If you pulled it off and opened your case, it voided your warranty. These days no manufacturer in their right mind would do that since people add everything from home networking to cd-writers to firewire cards. >>



actually i believe a court case was brought about and practices like that declared in violation of fair-use, i.e. there are slots in the computer specifically for add-in cards, so it is fair-use of the system to add those cards.

 

[ragiepew]

I could swear Compaq Presarios still have that... i could be wrong though...

 

[kingz]

Yea, my Compaq Presario 4784 had that sticker. I broke it but Compaq didnt care. I just told them customer service told me to open up the case.