Proof That Dumb People Should Not Own Computers

[otakuneko]

Hardware with Vista-only drivers?
For shame.

[Tigress]

Hardware with Vista-only drivers?
For shame.

I know. I'm bad. But I didn't know it was originally a Vista machine until I got it. And I'm usually pretty good at finding XP drivers.

Most of the important bits work. The only issues I have are that the Wi-Fi and sound cards are Vista-only and XP is seeing the DVD-RW as a DVD-RAM. I'll just deal with Vista on my laptop. If nothing else, I'll be the resident Vista expert when my "real" job eventually upgrades to Vista and my family members buy new computers.

[Broomjockey]

BOOM! Pure profit.

I know that it's the cool thing to hate on companies, but I would like to point out there is another option, that's just as likely.

People threw the discs out. They'd get the system home, have no idea what the discs were for, and then just threw them out, not thinking they were important. Then, when something goes bad on the system, people would call in, be told those discs were important, and then they'd bitch out the CSRs until they were sent replacement discs. Since you can't throw out a partition, and it takes a decent effort to erase it, it probably saves a lot of time if it's set up to be able to restore from that partition. The CSRs can just walk the customer through the install using the partition, and possibly making new discs. Then failing that, it's a tax on people who don't take appropriate steps (such as making the discs in the first place), and it helps to pay for all the extra time those people take up on the phone with the CSRs, with some profit on the side.

[sld72382]

When I worked retail I asked one of the product reps why are they doing the restore partitions now (this was when they first started doing them).

He said, besides the reasons I gave above, is that Microsoft was worried that people might extract the O/S files from the CDs and pirate them.

[Broomjockey]

Microsoft was worried that people might extract the O/S files from the CDs and pirate them.

Bwah? And it's actually harder from the partition? Somehow I doubt that. If that's actually their reason, then they're dumber than I thought.

[Pedersen]

Actually, it's true. Look here.

It's a policy set in place by Microsoft to reduce piracy. Recovery CDs are an option, but they have to be locked to the system they will restore. The other option is a recovery partition. Given the difficulties of making a CD actually be locked to a specific machine, which do you think the companies go for?

Sucks all the way around.

[Hyndis]

Anti-piracy measures might prevent piracy by a few hours at the very most. Its much like a firewall. It won't hold forever, it just buys you a small amount of time. However unlike a real firewall where the fire can be extinguished before it burns through, software doesn't work like that.

Then with the more draconian forms of DRM, it ends up in punishing the legit customers while rewarding the pirate.



And yes, I've had to pirate software I legitimately purchased. More than a few times.

[otakuneko]

I would think it'd be a PITA to use a recovery disk for one machine on another one, unless they were identical. Those recovery disks tend to be fairly automatic, dumping OS, drivers, and software on in one fell swoop. I suppose you could extract it to an iso, and then edit (or hell, remove) the answer file for the windows installer.

Its much like a firewall. It won't hold forever, it just buys you a small amount of time.

Must be a crappy firewall.

[Hyndis]

Must be a crappy firewall.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Firewall_(construction)

[Dark-Star]

And yes, I've had to pirate software I legitimately purchased. More than a few times.

Oh yeah, I've been there. Just purchased a fairly fancy game that requires Internet access. (my game machine is 'off the grid' for many reasons) Crack time!

[Dreamstalker]

Recovery CDs are an option, but they have to be locked to the system they will restore.

When I was bored one day at the repair shop, I decided to sort through all the CDs. Apart from the legit MSDN stuff, a lot of the usable discs were restore CDs for systems that we didn't have. I could maybe see the shop keeping those if it was for a particular customer's computer, but none of the discs had names/any identifying info on them. The rest was older driver discs (most tied to a particular system/mainboard/other piece of hardware which the shop did not possess) and suspicious-looking copies.

I was recently presented with a game I'd been wanting for awhile, but which has various evil DRM restrictions on it. Time to search teh intarwebs for the cracked version.

[PepperElf]

*shudder*
... i don't know why but i've NEVER - and i mean never - had a Recovery that actually worked for me. Never. The best I could do was just reformat.

well... on microsoft that is. on my mac, that's a different story.

[Broomjockey]

That's odd. I've never had a recovery fail on me. Hell, my system was shot 3 ways to Sunday not too long ago, a restore worked wonderfully. The few times a regular system restore wasn't available (the needed point had been discarded as too far back) a repair using the system disk worked fine.

[Pedersen]

My (all too brief) experiences: I used the restore on Windows 95, and found that I needed to reinstall all my programs too. Not much better than a reformat.

Ditto for Windows 2000.

WinXP? Never needed the repair, so dunno. Of course, never needed the repair because it was either work (where we would just reimage), or one of my virtual machines at home, which are only used to test my web site dev work and the little bit of Windows code I write. In short, I don't use XP, so never needed to repair it.

And Vista hasn't even been installed by me anywhere, so that's not tested either.

[sld72382]

The only time a recovery never seems to work on our client's computers is when some tech runs a non-destructive recovery to appease a client who starts freaking out about losing data with a destructive (format) recovery.

Half the time, it not only doesn't fix the problem but it creates around 10 others. That's why I don't even offer it to clients, it's either a) back up your stuff then call back for help with a format or b) enjoy your new paperweight.

Another thing that irks me is when fellow techs don't have the client disconnect all 3rd party devices before running the recovery.