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Thread: Laptop/Notebook Issues - Hidden Partitions, Recovery Disks, Reinstalls

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    Senior Member usxhe190's Avatar
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    Laptop/Notebook Issues - Hidden Partitions, Recovery Disks, Reinstalls

    A friend of mine just brought a new computer and he messed up the whole first Vista installation process on his new notebook.

    I want to help him start again but, as you know, new notebooks have NO recovery disks (only a hidden partition) and the restore points just goes back to the messed up situation.

    Is there anyway to rectify this so I can help him start all over again?

    To be honest, I am very new to Vista as well...

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    Re: Laptop/Notebook Issues - Hidden Partitions, Recovery Disks, Reinstalls

    Contact the supplier and see if they can supply a recovery disk, or try booting using a live linux cd and extract the recovery disk from the hidden partition and boot off that.
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    Re: Laptop/Notebook Issues - Hidden Partitions, Recovery Disks, Reinstalls

    peterb, is there a guide to use linux livecd to get burn a dvd of the recovery info from the hidden partition?

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    Re: Laptop/Notebook Issues - Hidden Partitions, Recovery Disks, Reinstalls

    Quote Originally Posted by usxhe190 View Post
    peterb, is there a guide to use linux livecd to get burn a dvd of the recovery info from the hidden partition?
    Not that I am aware of - however the concept would be to use a live CD (such as Knoppix) to boot the PC, ensure that you can see the hidden partition, then use the live CD's burner (Knoppix is the KDE burning tool) and burn off the recovery disk.

    I haven't had to do this - however I had to take an image of my daughter's laptop disk before it went for repair, and I mounted the image on my linux machione - and there was the hidden partition. I'll have a look this evening and see what format it is in (this is an HP machine) (The laptop came back with the hard drive intact, so I didn't need to do any restore - although as I cloned the whole disk, arestore would have been a reverse clone, rather than create a rescue disk)
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    Re: Laptop/Notebook Issues - Hidden Partitions, Recovery Disks, Reinstalls

    if we can have the make/model of the lappy in question then we can find you an online copy of the user manual something similar telling you exactly how to activate the hidden partition with no messing

    would be the best bet no?
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    Re: Laptop/Notebook Issues - Hidden Partitions, Recovery Disks, Reinstalls

    thanks guys, he has a Samsung R70. I have checked the Samsung website and it comes up with the standard crappy guide (i.e. nothing useful, especially on recovery etc).

    He also only has one DVD (which is the driver DVD) not the Vista recovery DVD. I am going to go to his place again and figure out how these laptop stuff works with hidden partition etc...

    edit - Just to let you know i went into their F4 recovery menu and it comes up with Samsung's own recovery system (presumably loading from the hidden partition). I then tried restore from the earliest point (i.e. registration) but it stills goes into the messed up situation. effectively he messed it up when he first turned on the laptop...

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    Re: Laptop/Notebook Issues - Hidden Partitions, Recovery Disks, Reinstalls

    Yea i noticed the hidden partition in mine, a FS AMILO Li 1718 thankfully i got all the install recovery cds/dvds however this is usually an extra option, and costs a fair bit for what they are. Thankfully i got mine free.

    Contact the vendor and see if they'll send them out to you as a good will gesture.

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    Re: Laptop/Notebook Issues - Hidden Partitions, Recovery Disks, Reinstalls

    Ok, just been looking in detail at the partitions on the HP machine I mentioned earlier, and it isn't as straightforward as I thought. Basically the recovery system seems to be an OS in its own right - as you have discovered with the Samsung.

    I don't suppose you know how your friend borked it on start up do you? I'm trying to imagine how, but these install systems are usually fairly foolproof...

    However, if it is a new machine, he may be better calling the suppliers support desk and trying to RMA it and get it sorted that way.

    I suspect he has done something to the partition arrangement, or managed to damage the MBR, but without messing with something like partition magic, gparted, or some other partition tweaking tool, it is difficult to say, and the risk of doing more damage is quite high.

    So bottom line - try to RMA it on the grounds that the OS didn't install.
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    Re: Laptop/Notebook Issues - Hidden Partitions, Recovery Disks, Reinstalls

    thanks peterb, i have no idea how my friend botched his computer up...i think rma is the way to go then...these new computers with their hidden partition is really confusing...i must be getting old...

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    Re: Laptop/Notebook Issues - Hidden Partitions, Recovery Disks, Reinstalls

    Yeah, I'd RMA it too. I wouldn't dig too much as if you mess up the recovery partition they may have sufficient grounds to refuse the RMA (I doubt they would, but you never know with some of these OEMs).

    I'm surprised they're not bundling images on some flash media now (maybe even some compact flash directly mounted to the motherboard), rather than continuing to use the recovery partition method.

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