Restoring old computer
Posted: Thu May 24, 2012 6:13 pm
A friend of mine has been having a lot of problems with their computer and I have been trying to fix it for them. The usual malware/virus checks have been made, though the machine won't seem to run any of the boot-time virus checkers from a CD. Like these for the most thorough checks, but can't use them.
I have run CrystalDiskInfo and it shows "Caution" for the single hard-drive. This drive is now 6 years old, so it's not surprising that it is starting to fail. SEAtools for DOS, Seagate's HD testing tool, won't run properly on this machine, as neither mouse nor keyboard work with it (this is apparently a known problem with some motherboards/chip-sets).
There are various optinons including buying a new machine, though replacement of the hard-drive is a considerably less expensive solution. This is a Hewlett-Packard machine and the hard-disk has the usual two partitions, one related to restoring the system. There are also two restore CDs that the user made as part of the initial set-up process.
What I want to know is, if a new HD is purchased and the restore CDs are used, can I expect them to create the two partitions again, as on the original HD, or do I need to do anything to save/image the current restore partition? I suspect the partitions will be created, but I am not sure.
Thank you
Gordon
I have run CrystalDiskInfo and it shows "Caution" for the single hard-drive. This drive is now 6 years old, so it's not surprising that it is starting to fail. SEAtools for DOS, Seagate's HD testing tool, won't run properly on this machine, as neither mouse nor keyboard work with it (this is apparently a known problem with some motherboards/chip-sets).
There are various optinons including buying a new machine, though replacement of the hard-drive is a considerably less expensive solution. This is a Hewlett-Packard machine and the hard-disk has the usual two partitions, one related to restoring the system. There are also two restore CDs that the user made as part of the initial set-up process.
What I want to know is, if a new HD is purchased and the restore CDs are used, can I expect them to create the two partitions again, as on the original HD, or do I need to do anything to save/image the current restore partition? I suspect the partitions will be created, but I am not sure.
Thank you
Gordon