----- Original Message ----- From: "Ben Ruset" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: "The Hardware List" <hardware@hardwaregroup.com> Sent: Friday, June 01, 2007 6:32 PM Subject: Re: [H] Compaq hidden partition
That is assuming, of course, that Ghost won't freak out with the crazy partition.
I do not want to sound like a "know it all" here but it would be a disservice to not inform y'all that I have 10 years of experience in this area. What area? Specifically in cleaning off hard drives on name brand computers and doing clean installs.
Don't follow this procedure unless you are confident in your ability to acquire the correct drivers for everything. This includes, but it not limited to the motherboard resource drivers, that long list in Device Manager. Usually the only ones Windows does not furnish are the bus controller drivers or the onboard video and/or audio controller drivers. You are in rough territory unless you can boot the beast into Windows (I use safe mode so the crapware will not slow me down too much as I poke around) in order to write down the identification of the hardware in Device Manager that you will have to furnish drivers for.
I use the hard drive manufacturer's software to wipe off the drive and partition it my way. You must know the brand of hard drive and acquire this software. This may require that you remove the hard drive, if its brand is not available to you in Setup. First I attempt to work from the customer's computer that the hard drive is attached to. If that does not work, I remove the hard drive and install it into my shop computer. This is one of many reasons that serious technical work has to be done on the bench, in the shop, not in the customer's home. When the going gets rough in the customer's home, the Dell technician get going, straight to the shop with the computer. This happens before or after he wastes 2 hours in the home convincing himself that computers should be repaired in the shop, not in the home. Sure, you can do minor things in the home, but often what you think is minor turns into something major. All that time in the home is wasted.
Back to square one. Either in the customer's computer or in my shop computer, the hard drive gets cleaned, even any small manufacturer's partition. You end up with no data, not even basic drivers. You furnish all of the data, including the media from which to install the operating system. The best reason to have the hard drive manufacturer's software on a bootable CD instead of a bootable floppy disk is that you must boot to the Windows CD in order to install Windows. The booting to a CD to wipe the hard drive is a test and verification that you can boot to the CD Drive. You are lost if you have wiped a hard drive and then can not boot to the Windows CD. The shop computer can not help you here. If you can not boot to a CD you have a messed up BIOS (or BIOS setting), or a defective IDE controller. Make sure you have set the boot order in the BIOS correctly.
I could write a book on the benefits of completely wiping off a hard drive and doing a clean install of Windows. The main affect is you make the computer forget it is a name brand computer. It runs like a clone, much better! Delete this whole letter if you like name brand computers and the way they run right out of the box. Follow the computer manufacturer's restore process if you like the way it ran when new.
I have for over 10 years done this procedure on Dell's, Compaqs, HP's, eMachines, Gateways, and others. How often? 100% of the time. If I can not do a wipe and clean install, I send it home not repaired. I do it the best way or no way. I know the results of clean installs. Either you agree with me or you stand with the 90% of customers who do not. Their taking their business elsewhere has forced me to go and take a real job that pays me by the hour, not in the computer industry. There are literally hundreds of name brand computers out there running much faster than others in their class due to having clean installs of Windows. Some have to see it only once to be convinced. I have seen it hundreds of times because I did the wipe and clean install.
Chuck
