[MattS]

Originally Posted by uwila

Sorry, but your comments are not accurate.

Oh I think they are.

Some machines only come with a 're-install disc' which totally wipes the C: partition (often the only one in these machines) and no options are possible.This is increasingly the case as it means the manufacturer has a process of getting your O/S back to a known state.

The sort of disk you are talking about is a proprietary rescue CD. Such CDs usually rely on a rescue partition hidden on the original hard disk. These are not Window's XP install CDs, although they may well have a subset of an XP CD on them. They were very popular when M$ originally changed their licensing terms to OEMs at the time of XPs launch. They fell out of popularity just as soon as the first wave of machines provisioned in such a way started to need new hard disks and rebuilds (12 to 24 months). The OEMs were inundated with calls to supply real XP Install disks by Technicians attempting to affect repairs. In the UK the seller risks a small claim, under Sale of Goods - Fit for Purpose, should they refuse. The customer care ended up costing more than had disks shipped with PCs so most of the larger OEMs returned to doing so. As it is, the vast majority of PCs originate from just three large OEMs supplying primarily business customers - which puts odd slants on works like usually and likely.

Irrespective of how the PC was originally provisioned, booting from a real XP Install CD will in all cases allow a repair to be initiated, if not completed. Microsoft inflicted a further headache by creating several flavours of XP Install CD which only recognise certain Serial Numbers but any good Technician will know how to get around that.

Sadly, all your data are sacrificed to the Gods of 'cheap support'.

In my view you have to be rather naive to go along with casual acceptance of data loss. I would not last 10 minutes in business with an attitude like that. I don't deal with domestic customers though. No one that has brought a PC or Server to me has lost data that was located on a readable portion of a hard disk. I am not 'cheap' however and regularly question if those that are cheap, really warrant using the word 'support'...let alone 'technical support' in their service descriptions.

If warmwaterdiver has one like this, then there is no 'you just need to know...' etc. If he has a seperate O/S install disc, then you are right, but this is not very likely.

If he has one like that he need only find someone local with a proper one - they are far from uncommon. Providing you have a license and serial number it probably is not illegal to download an XP Install image from a torrent site even. Where we appear to differ here is that I do not believe DIY is always the best option - far from it. There are plenty of Technicians around that will have the tools and nonce to sort this out in short order at trivial cost and without losing data.

What 'you just need to know' is that there are no circumstances in which casual loss of important data is acceptable. As you can see I object to the spreading of this myth. There are a very small number of circumstance where data really is unrecoverable but they are few and far between. Most data is recoverable and it is a question of expertise and the trouble one must take to recover it. The sequence of events between data becoming inaccessible and unrecoverable has a great influence on the trouble and eventual cost. In the majority of cases those customers seeking recovery services from me would have had bills 1/5 of what they were had they sought my services a bit earlier. Those customers that ran recovery CDs over perfectly good disks and then realised what they had done...well a two hour job turns into a 20 hour job.

The best bet is to connect the disc externally,

Sorry Chris this is akin to telling a mechanic the best bet is to use an adjustable spanner. If you are not tooled up for the job then a USB enclosure might be your only bet. Certainly if that is all I had to hand and the data was not important that is what I would try. As it is, any system (PC, Server, Mac, whatever) presented to me for recovery is booted with a CD of my own making (that is I wrote some of the software on it), imaged to RAID and only when I am sure I have a decent bit level backup in quarantine do I attempt a repair. Such would be a lot of time and trouble for most people but it is rather quick and routine for me because I have both the tools and expertise. It might not yield any better result but there is virtually no chance of my losing someone else's data - Doing so is totally unacceptable to me.

...crawls back to the basement.