rzj
15-06-2007, 06:59 PM
I have a Novatech PC with Vista Business pre-installed. Since Vista does not yet support all of my needs I wanted to dual boot XP. Unfortunately somewhere in the process of installing XP I managed to mess up the boot loader for XP and could not find any way to get back in to the recovery partition.
Using a partition tool to set the vista partition, or the recovery partition active was not successful.
Of course the advice online from experts and from Microsoft is to just boot up your Vista DVD and use the repair options.
When I received the PC and made the phone call many others have probably made .. "where's my recovery disc?"... I was told that I didn't really need one due to the recovery partition, but that one would be available soon.
I tried using VistabootPro to repair the vista boot, running it from the xp partition, but it complained that it needed to be run as Administrator. Presumably really meaning run under the vista administrator ID, not the XP one (which it was running under)
Tech support could not offer any suggestions apart from the recovery dvd, so I ordered one - not too pleased with having to pay for it!
It is very fortunate that I started all this before doing any real work on the machine either on XP or Vista partitions (apart from a couple of hours of windows updates and installing virus and firewall), because the Novatech recovery disc seems to have no option to repair the installation. It just boots up, and wipes the whole drive then reinstalls vista to the whole drive - ignoring the non-vista partitions, ignoring the fact that vista and the recovery partition were intact and it just needed the loader replaced, and not even offering a warning that it was about to nuke everything on the drive.
This could be a disaster for anyone with work that has not been backed up.
It is also extremely poorly thought out.
The retail discs have a repair option, so do the xp oem discs.
Not only that, but the recovery disc does not even recover the PC to delivery state - it does not install a recovery partition, so you are then left with no chance of recovery in the future - thus the whole argument that Novatech don't need to give you media as they give you a recovery partition is not reinstated by the repair.
Please rethink this Novatech !
I doubt if there are many Novatech customers that never open the PC up to modify it - indeed the delivery paperwork makes it clear that you are permitted to. Implicit in this is a higher likelihood of needing to reinstall the OS throughout the life of the machine. Yet we are not provided with the means to do so.
Unless this situation is rectified, Novatech Vista PC's represent a bad deal
AVOID!
Using a partition tool to set the vista partition, or the recovery partition active was not successful.
Of course the advice online from experts and from Microsoft is to just boot up your Vista DVD and use the repair options.
When I received the PC and made the phone call many others have probably made .. "where's my recovery disc?"... I was told that I didn't really need one due to the recovery partition, but that one would be available soon.
I tried using VistabootPro to repair the vista boot, running it from the xp partition, but it complained that it needed to be run as Administrator. Presumably really meaning run under the vista administrator ID, not the XP one (which it was running under)
Tech support could not offer any suggestions apart from the recovery dvd, so I ordered one - not too pleased with having to pay for it!
It is very fortunate that I started all this before doing any real work on the machine either on XP or Vista partitions (apart from a couple of hours of windows updates and installing virus and firewall), because the Novatech recovery disc seems to have no option to repair the installation. It just boots up, and wipes the whole drive then reinstalls vista to the whole drive - ignoring the non-vista partitions, ignoring the fact that vista and the recovery partition were intact and it just needed the loader replaced, and not even offering a warning that it was about to nuke everything on the drive.
This could be a disaster for anyone with work that has not been backed up.
It is also extremely poorly thought out.
The retail discs have a repair option, so do the xp oem discs.
Not only that, but the recovery disc does not even recover the PC to delivery state - it does not install a recovery partition, so you are then left with no chance of recovery in the future - thus the whole argument that Novatech don't need to give you media as they give you a recovery partition is not reinstated by the repair.
Please rethink this Novatech !
I doubt if there are many Novatech customers that never open the PC up to modify it - indeed the delivery paperwork makes it clear that you are permitted to. Implicit in this is a higher likelihood of needing to reinstall the OS throughout the life of the machine. Yet we are not provided with the means to do so.
Unless this situation is rectified, Novatech Vista PC's represent a bad deal
AVOID!