Wednesday, December 30, 2015

Good News and Annoying News

My 1TB drive replacement for the ThinkPad arrived today, looking like a punch line of a joke about packaging.  A Priority Mail small flat rate box, inside a Priority Mail envelope, inside a Manila envelope.

Installation of the disc was almost trivial.  The BIOS sees it, and it passes diagnostics.

The bad news is that like all things Microsoft, system image restore is nothing like promised.  There are zilloions of web pages telling you solutions that don't work, including installin from the Windows 7 install DVD (which I have).

UPDATE: This page  suggests boot must be legacy only.  Solved nothing.

UPDATE 2: This tells how to use DISKPART, the Windows 7 version of FDISK (for those of you old enough to remember it).  I am trying this.  Nope.

Finally gave up, took it to Northwind.  They have seen this problem before where Windows 7 will not install from DVD or recovery CD.  $85, but at least it gets me operational again.

3 comments:

  1. At least the package wasn't delivered like this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UOJiEgxt7RY

    Seriously though, so how far do you get and do you get error messages or what?

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  2. For both Windows7 Install DVD and recovery CD: same complaint: missing DVD/CD driver.

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  3. After decades of using Windows, I finally converted to OS X 3 years ago. I am really glad that I did. Not only is the software quality vastly greater, but it runs on high quality hardware (in my case, a Mac Mini). As a mild added benefit, it is Unix inside, although annoyingly, BSD/Next Unix.

    When I need windows, which I still do occasionally, I just run a Windows 7 image in a virtual machine. Since that windows is rarely used, and I have copies of it, Windows follies are less likely with it. I don't go out on the Internet with it, so it is less likely to get infected.

    I am not an Apple fan-boi. There are aspects of the company I don't like, such as their left wing politics and their arrogance. I use Android mobile devices. But they do understand quality, and their stuff mostly just plain works. Besides, it's not like Microsoft has a better attitude.

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