When To Dump it all and Reinstall?

Oh my. Almost every other post here talks about saving the system, etc, and having to do a clean install when all else fails. What kills me is that you're all talking about losing all files, or having to tell the customer everything will be lost! That's NUTS!!! Has anyone ever heard of Ghost?!? Ever thought of spending a little cash and buying a drive to back up data with?? Or a CD burner?? Jesus.

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That's me! >:)

I hope I didn't offend anyone...I'm just a little suprised at what I've been reading tonight https://forums.windrivers.com/

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That's me! >:)

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Originally posted by Hippie_Techs:
Tech666, in five years you have only reloaded the OS once? What kind of machines do you work on? I don't mean to sound like a jerk, but it seems a little unrealistic to me. A consumer takes home a Presario (POS) and they, along with their entire family, proceed to install a 1001 games and software titles, get into every nook and cranny of their OS, uninstall 1001 games and software titles, download umpteen software upgrades/patches, install demo software, have Banzai Buddy and Virtual Girl running, and everything under the sun is loading at startup. They also have a CDRW drive, a scanner, and their business files are on this machine. The machine stopped booting into normal mode so backing up onto CDR media is an impossibility. Did I forget to mention that there is only 50MB of hard drive space left. "This machine is only three years old. What do you mean I should consider getting another machine?" I'm not saying that the machine is toast, but the customer has outgrown it. Trying to figure out what is locking the machine up isn't impossible, but many long hours would be involved in getting it to work again. It is simply easier and less costly (both for the customer and the store owner) to save what can be saved (we can hook up their drive to our server and copy all the data onto CDR)and start from scratch. The customer can pick and choose what data they need back on their drive and it was quick and painless. To say that you would spend hours of time trying to get everything working again without reloading would be ludicrous. We get this scenario fairly frequently and not just on Presarios. I know my fair share of how the operating system works, but I don't write programs so I can't waste too much time trying to fix something that I know is never going to work correctly unless I wipe it out and start over. I will admit that this response is prompted by experience. I've been the Tech that thinks it will only take a few more minutes. Believe me it never does. Yes, it is nice to solve a problem so you'll know what to do next time, but next time happens too rarely to justify that much time.

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I am not starting an argument so dont go there, but I have to defend Tech666 to a point. I have very rarely ever had to slash and burn a hard drive. A little trip into the registry, removing programs from startup and Autoexec that do not need to be there and an overlay has solved most problems I have encountered. At this point if the problem isn't solved I will do a total reload. It really does not take that much more time as an overlay pretty much does itself. Someone had a point about the 1001 progs installed and uninstalled and running in the background on a compressed drive. It is usually a lost cause at that point.


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Suicidal twin kills sister by mistake! Story at ten!

I think it all depends on the situation. If it's something that i've come across before that I KNOW will only be fixed by reinstalling (or doing some serious work in msconfig/sysedit/registry) then I ask the user to move everything he/she wants to keep into My Documents. It's a great spot because most people already have half their stuff in there anyway. Then I just slap a NIC in the pc (if there isn't one already...I work at a large corp. so everyone's on the lan/wan) and copy everything to my Win2k box. If there's on network available i'll just find an old drive and move it over. After that, just slap in a Win98 cd, make sure the bios is set to boot from cd, boot with CDROM support. Load smartdrv off the cdrom, format /q it, (assuming it was fat32 to begin with...if not, fdisk that bad boy), md C:\Cabs, D:, cd win98, copy *.* C:\cabs, (don't need the damn subdirs) then run setup from C:\cabs.

I'm sure you guys all know this stuff, but who knows...maybe it'll help someone https://forums.windrivers.com/

(Also, if you ever get one of those annoying msgs while processing the registry during bootup about "..blahblah.vxd that system.ini or the registry references cannot be found...," just do a <start> <run>, type regedit and do a search for that vxd. Take out the reference (after exporting the key to a file of course) and reboot. If you're lucky, it will be some bulls**t regkey left over by an old program that doesn't need it. If not, you may have to dig deeper...

Night guys.

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00111111.11001000.10001110.10011010
11111111.11111111.11111111.11111000
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That's me! &gt;:)

Well, I work in the Best Buy tech bay (please, no hate mail. I already know how we are loved. Kinda like the internet vs. AOL. Anyway...) and, luckily, most of the machines that we work on are machines that we sold, so we can most of the time tell them over the phone how to use their restore disk, which wipes out the machine and rebuilds it like it just came out of the box, and leave it at that. Being that we are corporately owned, we HAVE to make money for the department, and we know that most of our customers won't opt for us to try to get everything working again for the hourly (would probably be "daily") rate. Our higher ups don't look too keenly on charity work. Considering that most of them are just personal computers, and don't beling to businesses, i.e.: systems that belong to people who should've bought Playstations, it wouldn't be "profitable" to spend hours on getting this up and running. Admittedly, though, if it were my tech bay, I would probably try a little harder to try to save their OS.

firebird2k

We really do have some compitent techs at BB... Just not at all locations https://forums.windrivers.com/.

You all pose an interesting dilemma. I believe the driving force behind 'our' decision [it is ultimately _our_ call, I can sell the client either option] is economics, or time. If we are in this purely 'for the money' then which direction we choose is moot. I can justify either method to the point that the time spent is basically the same. _HOWEVER_, and this is where it really benefits our cash flow, if you choose to 'solve the puzzle' then, although it _IS_ nice to have that under your belt, you've limited yourself [your resources] to that issue. Now, if you chose the alternative route, your time is suddenly 'freed' up as the CD burn then the OS load runs. Suddenly, you're able to 1> screw around and still be getting paid, 2> take on a 2nd, 3rd 4th machine. Suddenly, your cash flow goes from $100 to $400 an hour. It almost a 'no-brainer' pun intended. I can do much more in my life with the extra cash, and 'not knowing'. In the end, I believe it's a better solution for the customer too. It's all in how you sell it, friends.

I have 5 years experience in the business. I dont own a shop, but I have a mobile service that I do 6 days a week. In response to your statement. The problem is this: Lets say that your system is hosed. Lets say your system is so bad (like many) that I cant even get the system to boot in safe mode. What I hear you saying is to backup the system to some external drive like a tape, exernal CDR, or external HDD , whatever, then whipe the drive , and then copy the corrupted data back in?!?! What I do is this: I ASK the customer if he/she needs the *DOCUMENTS* on drive. For some customers its just a family internet machine, and they really dont care. If this is the case a quick format does the job. I explain the programs will be lost either way. If the customer needs the documents, then I run a "deltree" on windows. This way the documents are saved, AND when the customer reinstalls the programs, the documents are still in the same place that the customer left them. It is then the responsibility of the customer to re-install the programs, to get access to the data. If this customer cannot reinstall this program , this means that this is an illegal bootleg copy or the cd is lost, and thats not my responsibility.

Quote:

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Originally posted by jrichard:
Oh my. Almost every other post here talks about saving the system, etc, and having to do a clean install when all else fails. What kills me is that you're all talking about losing all files, or having to tell the customer everything will be lost! That's NUTS!!! Has anyone ever heard of Ghost?!? Ever thought of spending a little cash and buying a drive to back up data with?? Or a CD burner?? Jesus.

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I have a simple rule on nuking and doing a clean install. If you curse more than three times while trying to save the thing, your not going to save it. Everyone gets to a point where they turn into a maniac and when you hit that point, your brian isn't going to work and you'll never get the thing done.

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Wanna get more power outta your PC? Flip the switch on the back or the power supply to 230w. You'll almost double your power! Anyone eles smell smoke?

First I want to thank all who responded to my post. It seems that most of us want to do the most for the customer as quickly and inexpensive as posible.(Techs Really Care About Their Customers) We have a Pro HD Workstation from CSC That takes care of 90% of hd problems without losing any data and at the same time (if the drive will spin)we make aclone on another drive. I will spend up to 1 hour on a OS problem if I am not successful I call the customer and put the ball in their court letting them know the cost and time involved and what their options are. Most say hose it. We always get a list of what is important to them and strive to save it. We also return their old drive on CDs $75.00 no limit. I too enjoy resolving an OS problem and yes their are some customers that I will beat my brain and pick any other techs brain around me to solve and fix a problem. But those are few. Back up, back up That is our motto. Thanks for the replys. I learned alot.

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If life is a bitch then what is death? I believe I will take the bitch!

Quote:

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Originally posted by jbar1:
We have many machines come into the shop that have the OS thourghly trashed due to any number of reasons where it will take more than an hour or two and then may not be reliable. We give the customer the facts and an estimate of cost involved including saving as many files as we can Vrs fdisk, format and reload and instructions on how to reduce the chanch of this happening again. (hah) Usually they take the easy and cheap way out(but dont follow our instructions). Our shop is small and busy with a good bit of Mission Critical work for commercial accounts. How do you decide the best method and do you include file recovery if posible?

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First I want to thank all who responded to my post. It seems that most of us want to do the most for the customer as quickly and inexpensive as posible.(Techs Really Care About Their Customers) We have a Pro HD Workstation from CSC That takes care of 90% of hd problems without losing any data and at the same time (if the drive will spin)we make aclone on another drive. I will spend up to 1 hour on a OS problem if I am not successful I call the customer and put the ball in their court letting them know the cost and time involved and what their options are. Most say hose it. We always get a list of what is important to them and strive to save it. We also return their old drive on CDs $75.00 no limit. I too enjoy resolving an OS problem and yes their are some customers that I will beat my brain and pick any other techs brain around me to solve and fix a problem. But those are few. Back up, back up That is our motto. Thanks for the replys. I learned alot.

1.) Format Drive
2.) Don't Reinstall Windows
3.) All should be fixed then

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Well, that depends on who you talk to in my old shop... if it was the boss, the answer to everything was format and reload, they can always restore from backup.

Me personally, if I cant figure out whats causing the problem in 30 mins, (and unable to restore registry from backups) delete registry re-install windows, but that always causes another problem... which I will be posting about in another forum!

Greasey.....

For me and my little repair shop, losing data is a no-no. I have definitely spent a few more hours than I charged for on some systems, and a lot of times spent quite a bit less than the minimum hours charge time, but I have an almost 99.9% satisified customer rate. I have to remember how it was when I got so frustrated with my computer that I had to call for help after trying what limited knowledge I had. When it got to that point, I definitely didn't want someone else just to wipe my system for me. I could have done that myself and saved myself the aggrivation. If the hard drive has physically gone to the great dumpster in the sky, you have lost your data, but other than that, at worst you will have to re-install some programs.

Charlie

Judgement calls on individual client systems.
Keep gobs of dump space on the shop server.
Burn CD copy, let client cull out data if
capable. Also carry an extra HD or 2 for field "insurance dumps" :-) As far as the school system Wan that I work on, several
sets of images have been built, classroom,labs,admin. We waste very little time before the GHOST boot and image CD`s come out. Pretty much the 3 curse rule with
us. 15000 computers to maintain, NO WAY to spend 2+ hours trying to unhose machines that
secrataries have blitzed with every imaginable bit of fluff they can install.
Or lab computers that have been hosed by "KID
HACKER wannabes" Blast em and move on to the
next challange.. One thing remains constant,
If they hose it, they`ll hose it again. Don`t
waste a lot of time trying to educate the masses what not to do. They`ll do it again..

Hmm, Well, i think that everyone is right, there is a time to wipe, and there is a time to dig and fix.
I used to prefer fixing a trashed o.s., but now i have no time to dig into each system at great length,
I generally, just get a feel for the problem and then make a decision from there..

if i need to wipe and re-install, i usually do one thing before fdisking. i run a little progie called zapdisk. it is positivly guarenteed to get rid of all viruses,and overlays.
just my three bits (inflation)