i think he means in the case of this pc the OP is fixing. sure it would probably benifit most of us here, but the impresison i get from the OP and the users of this PC is that they're not going to care about partitions and will just install stuff in the default location on C with windows, meaning half the programs will be on this partition, the rest will be with windows
Repairing someone elses windows install
- Thread starter JonJ678
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i think he means in the case of this pc the OP is fixing. sure it would probably benifit most of us here, but the impresison i get from the OP and the users of this PC is that they're not going to care about partitions and will just install stuff in the default location on C with windows, meaning half the programs will be on this partition, the rest will be with windows
Im sure a few years ago I had a virus on a C partition that ended up spreading to my D partition. I thought all was fine, formatted C and all my stuff would be still ok.
Once windows was reinstalled and the files were in there but most of it was corrupt, the files were present but a picture that was 1000kb showed as 1kb or something. Luckily I had backup up on external most the stuff, only lost collage work and uni 1st and 2nd year stuff
Once windows was reinstalled and the files were in there but most of it was corrupt, the files were present but a picture that was 1000kb showed as 1kb or something. Luckily I had backup up on external most the stuff, only lost collage work and uni 1st and 2nd year stuff
Its tricky to fit a 20" TN, keyboard and mouse into a £250 budget if I want a tower as well. Current spec puts the tower at 350, the peripherals at 150. The atom has been suggested repeatedly, but the whole point is that she's tired of it being so slow. I don't believe for a second that the atom with 1gb of ram is quicker than the 2.4ghz pentium with 1gb of ram she's on at present, and I used an nc10 for months. Currently going with some form of intel matx board with an e5200 and 4gb of ram, which I reason should run beautifully however badly the operating system is treated. Since she wants it to be running brilliantly after a decade of mistreating xp, the higher spec hardware isn't so unreasonable.
I think the approach I'm going to take is getting a new hard drive, perhaps even *gasp* an ssd. Throughput means little here, but response times lots, and there an ssd wins. I'll dd the current one while she isn't looking, mount it and copy application settings off it as covered above. At a push I can probably boot from it in a virtualbox, shouldn't be needed though. The current 80gb ide will then start its new life as a backup drive, storing an image of the ssd in 'as new' state and with a copy of ubuntu on it, the rest of the capacity used to back up files.
It's been a useful thread, thanks guys. I'll let you know how this turns out
I think the approach I'm going to take is getting a new hard drive, perhaps even *gasp* an ssd. Throughput means little here, but response times lots, and there an ssd wins. I'll dd the current one while she isn't looking, mount it and copy application settings off it as covered above. At a push I can probably boot from it in a virtualbox, shouldn't be needed though. The current 80gb ide will then start its new life as a backup drive, storing an image of the ssd in 'as new' state and with a copy of ubuntu on it, the rest of the capacity used to back up files.
It's been a useful thread, thanks guys. I'll let you know how this turns out
I believe an NC10 is faster than a 2.4ghz pentium 4, 1gb ddr1. I (my dad) has an NC10 at home and it booted up with AVG and all needed apps, then ran internet etc faster than my P4 old machine. The only difference was running 3d games, the nc10 could do it ok but my p4 machine had a half decent card an ATI x800 if i remember rightly
When you do get this new pc make sure you make an image of the system drive with all the programs you want and everything set up perfectly then save it to a separate partition/drive it will make doing this sort of job a breeze in the future.
Exactly, most people will just install stuff in whatever path the program wants to, C:\program files\whatever, they aren't going to change the path, probably don't even understand what it means. All the time they will follow defaults. After only a few weeks you will be in a situation where they still have "important" files on c:
Just recently I looked at two laptops that had "full" hard drives, on checking the computer I find its one hard drive partioned in half with and C and D, the D drive had folders set by Acer for Data but they had been hardly used at all.
Ended up using Partition magic to create one large C drive and left D and the hidden Acer partition as small as they could be. Two happy friends who thought they needed more memory (lol) sorted !
Thought I'd report what I finally went with. There is now a shiney new computer which to my annoyance makes less noise than my one, and will run quickly whatever happens to it. C2D/4gb/matx set up. It was trialled with my vertex, and is now being run using an 80gb hard drive. I'll find out next time I visit if she wants the ssd or not, I suspect from the lack of phone calls it's fine as it is.
The advice above to image the drive was solid, I did so. If need be and I missed something I can mount the image and extract whatever it was, but I think it's all good for now. It has two partitions, the second contains the image of the original set up and little else.
While I split my drives into many partitions and benefit from doing so, I don't think there's any point in this case. However I do have an nlited cd with drivers, avast, firefox etc on it which makes installation rather painless. It also means when I come to look at it cpu-z and so forth will be already present under start menu / tools.
Cheers for all the help guys.
The advice above to image the drive was solid, I did so. If need be and I missed something I can mount the image and extract whatever it was, but I think it's all good for now. It has two partitions, the second contains the image of the original set up and little else.
While I split my drives into many partitions and benefit from doing so, I don't think there's any point in this case. However I do have an nlited cd with drivers, avast, firefox etc on it which makes installation rather painless. It also means when I come to look at it cpu-z and so forth will be already present under start menu / tools.
Cheers for all the help guys.