New Pc Missing Recovery Disks

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Is Your New PC Missing It's Recovery Disks?

Subjects > Computers > Hardware

Beware of a new scam from PC manufacturers such as Sony . They claim this is being forced on PC manufacturers by Microsoft: Your new desktop PC or laptop might not include any operating system disks. You might be forced to use a set of recovery disks to restore your system, and they can only be used to return your computer to the original operating system. Even worse they may not even give you these recovery disks, they may hide them in a second partition on your hard drive where they are vunerable to viruses and other threats. If you don't immediately make a set of disks using a utility they supply, you might be out of luck and not have disks when you need them.
If you want to change your operating system, you could be out of luck. If you decide you want to put a different operating system on your Sony Vaio PC, or Sony Vaio laptop, you'll find that all the device drivers you'll need are locked inside those recovery disks, and are not accessible to use with other operating systems. Sometimes Sony has the drivers on their website, but often some of the drivers seem to be missing. You might have to be pretty savvy with the internet to find the drivers if they exist, or you might need to pay the neighborhood technician to find them for you.

Regardless of the problems associated with these recovery disks, at least you should be able to wipe your machine clean and bring it back to it's original factory software configuration. New machines don't even include this fallback.

Sony's most recent notebook computers, (this is February 2004, such as the PCG-TR3A), are being shipped without any disks at all! No operating system disks, no device driver disks, no application disks, no recovery disks!!! (They include only an ever present AOL CD!) You'll be forced to make your own recovery disks from a hard drive "recovery partition". This process is extemely error prone and difficult, and it turns out that you will need the patience of Job, (and maybe also the lifespan of Methusaleh), to successfully complete the process. So far in the last 24 hours, I've been through the Vaio Recovery Wizard process 3 times, and have yet to complete one set of disks that I am reasonably sure of. Two times the process aborted with an error after one or more disks were made. Only once did it complete, but it completed the fourth disk of the set suspiciously fast (like in a couple of minutes, compared with 10 minutes or more for all the other disks), and I am not sure if the set is any good.

If the process to create recovery disks works properly, you'll need about two hours to create nine CDs. If there is any error in the process, like when you are making the 5th disk, you'll need to start over and make all the disks from the start. There is no way to continue on after the mistake. It's difficult to imagine how they could have made the process any more difficult, time consuming, frustrating, error-prone, and unlikely to succeed.

Recovery Disk Problems

System Recovery CD Problems Discussion
Problems With Recovery CD And Trying To Change Operating System - Problems with drivers not easily found on recovery CD and trying to change operating system on a Sony Vaio Laptop
HP CUSTOMERS FURIOUS OVER MISSING XP RECOVERY DISKS - Hewlett-Packard scrapped recovery disks for its latest range of Pavilion PCs, but didn't anticipate the furious customer response. The result: HP was forced to retreat. The company began sending out standard backup CDs to customers, but only to those who complained. What prompted the customer outrage was HP's decision to favor installation of Windows XP recovery files on a partition on the hard drive, instead of the backup CDs.
Another comment on lack of restore disks with sony computers
Why doesn't Sony ship recovery disks
Compaq Presario S5000NX Desktop PC (2.50-GHz Celeron, 128 MB RAM, 40 GB Hard Drive, CD-RW Drive) - The machine does not ship with recovery disks..so I burnt my own following the instructions (6 disks) which took about 45 minutes.
Problems getting the correct recovery CDs from sony
Problems caused by unreadable recovery CDs
Problems with Sony Vaio PCG-Z1VAP1 Recovery discs Sony Vaio PCG-Z1VAP1 requires the user to make 10 recovery CDs

Links to other sites

http://www.recovery-cds.com - Lots of recovery cds * [Recovery cds for Sony, Acer, Dell, IBM, Panasonic, Toshiba, Advent, Alienware, Asus, AST, Ascentia, Compaq, Fujitsu, Siemans, Hewlett Packard, HP, Gericom, Iridium, Medion, NEC, Patriot, Samsung, Sharp, Time, Tiny, Gateway, Averatec, Ei System, eMachine, JVC, Packard Bell, Philips, AlbaComp, Dreamsys, Everex, Legend, Spirit]
http://www.user-guides.co.uk - a link on how to make your own recovery cd also all the sony recovery cds are availabe here [Recovery cds service manuals boot cds and diagnostics]

http://linux.highsphere.net/howtos/z1vap.php - How to for linux, and recovery disks nightmare
http://www.pcworld.com/news/article/0,aid,101787,00.asp In search of missing laptop drivers - Trying to obtain a system recovery CD for a second-hand notebook PC can be difficult.
[Users find Microsoft's 'medialess' anti-piracy play hard to swallow] from The Gripe Line by Ed Foster.
[Problems with Sony TR2A Recovery Wizard] - User was never able to make recovery disks using the supplied Sony utility. Titled Installing Windows XP Professional on the Sony Vaio TR2A Laptop by Phil Wherry
[Backing up your desktop and laptop]
[Are Recovery Disks All The Same?]

Some searches you might try to find more information

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