How not to allow users to restore their pcs to working order 2006 April 26 11:46
Posted by diamond in : Random , 1 comment so far(can you see a pattern here?)
A case study:
- Ship a pc without any system media to use for restoration. Bad
- Provide a hidden restore partition on the hard drive with the restoration s/w in it. Not great
- Provide a utility to create restore media. Ok
- Have said utility burn a system restore disc, and delete itself upon completion. Moronic
- Have said utility not check to see if the disc burnt was even valid or readable. Unbelievably moronic
The above was the case with my dell inspiron 9100 laptop. Disc burnt wasn’t readable. I was soo glad i’d taken an image of the entire system before trusting dell to be competent. And if you thought that was bad, the dell dimension 9150 i received yesterday only has points 1 & 2 above. So, if you corrupt, say, your partition table, you’re up a well known creek with no means of propulsion. Well done dell. Have a cookie.
*Update*
I should note that i’ve not been bitten by this because my previous experiences have taught me to be extremely cautious about this stuff, so the first thing i did upon receiving the 9150 is to image the diagnostics and restoration partitions. Long live sysresccd + partimage.
