Date: Thu, 22 Dec 2005 17:06:24 -0500
To: WSFA members <WSFAlist at KeithLynch.net>,
        WSFA members <WSFAlist at KeithLynch.net>
From: "Mike B." <omni at omniphile.com>
Subject: [WSFA] Re: Speaking of upgrades...[WSFA] Re: Odd events
Reply-To: WSFA members <WSFAlist at KeithLynch.net>

At 12/22/2005 04:47 PM, Barry L. Newton wrote:
>Most Remarkably, Mike B. wrote:
> >Don't change too much of your hardware at once or XP will refuse to run
> >until you get a permission slip from MicroSoft (XP's hated "anti-piracy"
> >system...the reason I'll never run it on a desktop.  It's on my laptop, but
> >I won't be changing the hardware on that).
>
>I'm currently rebuilding Judy's Dell laptop after a total disk
>failure.  Dell got us a new disk overnight under warranty, and the XP
>validation happened automatically and painlessly.

That's because it was just a disk.  Replace a disk, a video controller, a
motherboard and add some memory...each item adds to total points, and if
you go over the limit you have to contact MS for permission to use your own
system.  This is annoying at best (call, wait on hold, explain the
situation, convince them that you really do own a license, etc.) and if
they've moved on to newer OSs, or are otherwise not interested in helping
you use your system anymore (maybe they went belly up?) you are SOL.

They have versions of XP that are free of this sort of thing, but those are
sold only to large corporations who pay a load of money for licenses up
front and so get special treatment.

>Now, reinstalling software, that's going to take a while.

It took over three weeks to get it all back on when I lost an NT partition
during an install of AutoCAD's "Auto Sketch" product.  I didn't bother
trying to reinstall that piece of garbage after that.

Now, before I do installs, I back up everything.  You can't back up Windows
while it's running, so I back up by copying the system disk partitions to
another drive using System Comander's partition copy capability.  Partition
Magic or Ghost would probably work well too.

I have installed removable drive trays in my system to make swapping HD's
trivial (turn the key, lift the lever and pull...it's out.  Slide in the
replacement, push the lever down, turn the key to lock in place, done).

I just pull the data drive out, put in the backup system disk, copy the
partitions (about an hour and a half for 15 gigs), then install on the
backup disk so my working "live" disk isn't touched.  If the install goes
well, I copy the backup back to the live disk, and put the backup on the
shelf.  If I ever lose the system disk I can be back up with my latest copy
in the time it takes to swap drives and reboot.

At no time do I not have a usable system disk...this came in handy when the
upgrade to Win2K went south.  Got to the final boot and suddenly it
couldn't find the boot disk (that it had just finished writing everything
to...).  I just pulled the drive, stuck my old NT in and came back up while
I worked out what the problem was, then tried it again a few months later
(turned out to be an old HD that was a little slow spinning up...NT wasn't
bothered, but Win2K failed to boot about 3/4 of the time).

For data backup I just copy everything to a 400 gig USB external
drive.  Since my data disk is only 20 gigs, and less than half full, I
should be able to keep lots of backup copies on that drive. ;-)

-- Mike B.