Re: Linux on flash drive question.....

jim wrote:
"Baron" <baron.nospam@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
news:g0pbbn$dth$1@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Mark Madsen wrote:

On Sun, 18 May 2008 12:12:43 +0300, Vahis wrote:

I hope this makes my goals more clear.

No. It doesn't. Quite the contrary. I have no idea what you are
talking about anymore. I give up.

The source of the obscurity is that the OP insists on having a
single, huge complicated, do-it-all tool, rather than being willing
to consider having a small set of simple, well-adapted, and easily
acquired tools.

In other words, the problem is overconstrained and this normally
means that no good solution exists.

I have watched this thread with interest, since I am doing Wins
servicing from a USB key running Linux ! I have to agree with Mark
that the OP is not going to achieve his goal the way he thinks.

I would argue that if a Wins machine is compromised in any way, then
just data recovery is what is wanted, not system repair ! So nuke
and pave would be the sensible option.

While this may seem like the ideal solution, for many of my clients it
is not. A "nuke and pave" option can take many hours (easily 4+)
depending on the number of installed apps, number of patches for each
application, re-connecting mapped drives, installing hardware drivers
for scanners, printers and such, and let's not forget the many patches
that Windows itself takes.

All I can say is you need to educate your clients ! If they are stupid
enough not to back up data they wouldn't want to loose, that is not
your fault. But I do suspect that you are not dealing with commercial
clients but joe public. In which case they are their own worst enemy !

I can restore a complete machine from backup in less than an hour
complete with the applications that are required to do the work needed
to perform their daily functions.

Add to those things that most users do not back up their data as they
should and that they all want to keep every little tweak that they
ever made to their system and "nuke and pave" becomes quite a bitter
pill to swallow.

In any case that would be the only way to guarantee a clean
instalation. Then put in the required protections.

Maybe I've just been extremely lucky, but I have never met the
infestation that I could not completely remove without a complete
install. And, I agree about the required protection - lack of this is
primarily what causes the infections in the first place.

Then there is the instance that you did not address - non-readable
disk sectors. While the hard drive in question should probably be
replaced asap, you can frequently overcome disk sector errors with the
proper software tools. I do so quite frequently.

If a disk sector is really unreadable then the data is lost anyway !
Just replace the faulty disk !

Thanks for your thoughts on the subject though. They are always
welcome.

jim

--
Best Regards:
Baron.
.

Relevant Pages

  • Re: wordpad gone
    ... everything except word pad anyway. ... Do you have a local i386 folder or are you installing from a Windows XP ...
    (microsoft.public.windowsxp.newusers)
  • Re: How to beat activation
    ... Jim wrote: ... I have also read that if you format the hard drive then this will not work, but when I partitioned and formatted my drive I took an image of just that, so the image has nothing on it just the 2 bare partitions then I went about installing my copy of xp about 7 months ago, now I have gone back on that old image and installed a fresh copy of XP and tried the trick as mentioned above with the 2 files but it failed to work, it said something like "I need to activate before logging in" so it didn't work for me. ... The only thing I can think of that is causing the problem is when setting up windows it asks/gives the computer a name I "think" the fresh install was a different name so I'm guessing this could be the problem but welcome any feedback from anyone. ...
    (microsoft.public.windowsxp.general)
  • Re: How to beat activation
    ... Jim wrote: ... I have also read that if you format the hard drive then this will not work, but when I partitioned and formatted my drive I took an image of just that, so the image has nothing on it just the 2 bare partitions then I went about installing my copy of xp about 7 months ago, now I have gone back on that old image and installed a fresh copy of XP and tried the trick as mentioned above with the 2 files but it failed to work, it said something like "I need to activate before logging in" so it didn't work for me. ... The only thing I can think of that is causing the problem is when setting up windows it asks/gives the computer a name I "think" the fresh install was a different name so I'm guessing this could be the problem but welcome any feedback from anyone. ...
    (microsoft.public.windowsxp.general)
  • Re: Where is the Address Book file located?
    ... the OE user files (DBX and WAB) are by default marked as> hidden. ... > Jim wrote: ... >> Just recently installed a new disk and after installing all of my ... >> old disk. ...
    (microsoft.public.windows.inetexplorer.ie6_outlookexpress)
  • Re: Messed Up Hard Drive
    ... He's not sure what he did but now the drive isn't recognized by any of the Linux cd's. ... I pulled out my Windows XP cd and when it came to installing it a message came up that there was no hard drive! ... PS My son doesn't remember what distro he was using when this problem occurred. ... Disk sector read function failed ...
    (comp.os.linux.setup)