Bought New Compaq Presario V5233ea

Wow, thanks for the tip yordan. That means if i have made 3 partitions and i use the restore CDs to put back the OS, it would re-partition the drive and set it to its default 2 disks, 90 and 10 GB respectively. Hmmm, seems like i can use the recovery CD ONLY when i have no choice and it would be my last option. Jeez .. *looks at bitcomet*



Well, yeah its Dubai, but more precisely its Abu Dhabi. It is available only at Carrefour Supermarkets around the United Arab Emirates. I called up the dealers of Compaq and HP here, and was quiet surprised to hear them say "We dont have that model yet !" lol, that means i guess Careffour is given the dealer status for the launch of the Laptop and later on it would go to the computer shops. The offer that i mentioned in my first post is only valid till the 22nd of September, so hurry up if you need to grab it

Regards
Dhanesh.

P.S. Right now i am using Acronis Image Creator to make a drive image. I would have used Norton Ghost, but didnt want to take the SATA vs IDE risk. After this would use partition magic and recreate the partitions as i was. Will keep posting as i do

Cheers.

 

 

 

Comment/Reply (w/o sign-up)

OK, to be honest, each individual experience is ... a particular case, and changes from day to day. But some usual strong ideas, like "urgently backup everything important" remain true.
On my HP laptop last month, when booting on the HP recovery CD, the whole disk was repartitionned, and all my data were lost. And I had no backup of my Excel files, so I just started crying.
Today, just for fun, I tried the same thing on my NEC workstation : I booted from the recovery media, and choose "install from factory settings".
And it only created my C: disk, and did not touch my D: disk, so all my data were here after re-install.
I had a backup, and I did not have to use it!

So, experimental facts are apparently that :
1) On HP laptop, re-installing from recovery media re-partition the drive, all data are lost.
2) On NEC workstation, reinstalling from recovery media does not touch the second partition, so no data are lost.

So, my strongly firm advice is : immediately do a backup of your data (our .doc, .xls, .jpg files, all the internet sites you created).
Do the backup on a rewritable DVD, just before touching the system disk.

If your disk is re-partitonnionned, thanks Yordan, you have a backup, simply read your backup and your data are here abain.
If your disk is not re-partionned, feel free to erase your re-writable disk. However, putting it in a safe place would be wiser, you never know.

Regards


Yordan

 

 

 

Comment/Reply (w/o sign-up)

lol, Yeah shure yordan . Thank You

I used 5 DVD's for a backup, how ? .. Well the first 2 were used for the PC Restore CD that the laptop asked me to create when i first switched it on. AND .. lol .. the 3 other dvds have a complete backup image of the entire 2 drives. Which i managed to do through Acronis.

Well after backup was done, i had to start partition. Guess what, it didnt go well . Actually Partition Magic Detects and does the partition. But the main problem comes when it restarts. Being a SATA drive, it does not detect the Windows OS after reboot. Hence the NTLDR error.

I used a hell lot of normal cds to burn boot up dos disks so i could get into dos and fdisk it completly again. But my frustration got more stronger everytime i realized i had no floppy drive. Ohh well .. i used a custom partition program that runs on startup. but it STILL gave the darn error NTLDR. Tries my other option of poping in the Windows XP CD and trying to partition tru it. but after the first screen it tells me that the HDD Was not detected lol.

Went to BIOS, and disabled SATA lol. NOW the damn thing can install XP. I went to the compaq site and saw the drivers available for download. Downloaded all of them and just now installed XP and installed the drivers. I dont see any ( ? ) in the Device Manager. So i am guessing that all installation went fine ..... I think ...

Till now no problems, and i am working on the networking, but i am nicely screwing up both my pc's with random blind clicks. I guess i'll stop now and just wait for professional advice.

Thankx again for helping me setup my Laptop guys.

Regards
Dhanesh.

Comment/Reply (w/o sign-up)

My hard disk is a ST380013AS, which is probably a SATA disk, and I have no problem.
I do trings a slightly different way, maybe you could try it.
I first install from the recovery CD. Then the system works fine, everything is OK except the system partition is too big. Then, I use Parition Magic only in order to shrink the system disk to a decent size (I say 10 or 20 gig should be enough).
Then I reboot, I see Microsoft works fine, except I can access a small part of my disk.
Now I use the Microsoft Disk in the Control Panel to create more partitions and format them. And that's all.
Just try this way next time you will experience a giant crash, and tell me if my system works for you.
Regards
Yordan

Comment/Reply (w/o sign-up)

Hmm, when u say shrink .. u mean you split rite ? Anyways, thankx for that tip .. i'll try it out anyways because what i have now is just an experimental install. My partition now is like 50, 25 , 25. Didnt think of using windows to partition lol. But then again, if i enable SATA right now, i doubt i'll have an easy nite re-installing.

Its worth a try tho, I'll post up my results ..

Regards
Dhanesh.

Comment/Reply (w/o sign-up)

No, when I say shrink, I mean "use Partition Magic in order to reduce the partition size".
When i install the system from the recovery CD's, the partition C: is 80 giga wide.
I use Partiton Magic, I choose "change size" and instead of 80 I put 20.
Then, I have a Windows c: partition which is 20 giga wide, and my disk has 60 giga free.
Then, I use the Windows disk manager in order to create my new partitions, which are 20 and 20 and something.
So, once Windows has booted, Windows has no problem creating new partitions and reboot after that. If I wand to work with Linux, I leave the last 20 gigs of my disk unpartitionned, the Linux installer will create the Linux partitions and manage the multiboot.

Comment/Reply (w/o sign-up)

Hi Dhanesh! I am very much interested in this laptop you bought. My brother is in Dubai and will be probably buying this for me. I checked out the specs you displayed and everything he mentioned is the same...even the price, except for one thing.....he said that it included a 256 MB dedicated videocard. How true is this?

Comment/Reply (w/o sign-up)