Have you ever read Spider Robinson's Callahan's Place stories? At Callahan's place there's a tradition of the patrons throwing handfulls of peanuts at someone who makes a really bad pun. Don't worry. I can't throw peanuts that far and in current financial state I'd eat peanuts rather than throw them at you.

About your laptop. I know that for years PC makers have put the data needed to restore the computer to its "from the factory" state in a hidden partition on the drive. I didn't know they were no longer including a disc to use in case the hard drive goes belly up. Remind me not to buy a Dell. I want a disc so I can reinstall it after the hard drive goes up in smoke. If I'm going to pay for windows, they can spend an extra 50 cents to include a dvd.

On 11/22/2011 21:33, Mark Phillips wrote:
Derek,

Dell laptops no longer come with install media. Windows is installed and all you can do is make a back up copy and a rescue disk. BTW, I live in Phoenix, so your laws are my laws...but we don't share the same in-laws.....oh man, that was really terrible....;)

Mark

On Tue, Nov 22, 2011 at 9:05 PM, Derek Trotter <[email protected] <mailto:[email protected]>> wrote:

Mark I understand you don't have the install discs for windows 7. This has me wondering if there is some copy protection scheme that
    makes it difficult to copy the windows 7 install disc(s).  If so
    is there a linux program that will get around it?

    Disclaimer:  I'm not condoning the use of pirated software in
    violation of any applicable laws where you live.  There is
    considerable expense involved in replacing a legit copy of any
    micro$oft OS.  So a backup would come in handy.

    On 11/22/2011 18:40, Mark Phillips wrote:
    I have managed to fill up my laptop's dual boot (Win 7 and Debian
    testing) 320 GB drive, so I have a new shiny 750 GB drive to
    install. I have tried to use Clonezilla, and it keeps failing
    because the old drive has 512 byte sectors and the new drive has
    4096 byte sectors. No problem; I will just create a system image
    of the Windows partitions to move that to the new drive, net
    install Debian testing, and copy over my user files.

    However, I was thinking that I could get rid of the dual boot and
    just virtualize the Windows partition. My questions -

    1. Can I create a virtual version of my Windows 7 Home Premium
    using the system recovery disk and the backup on my external usb
    drive? So far, it installs to the new 750 GB drive with no
    issues. I don't have any original media disks.

    2. Vmware or Virtualbox? Do either one support usb so I can run
    iTunes on my virtual Windows drive? A while ago I was able to get
    vmware to run off of the Windows disk partition, but it seemed to
    break every time I ran an upgrade on Debian, and it was a pain to
    get it to work each time. I don't want to fiddle with this
    approach again, unless I have to.

    Thanks for your suggestions!

    Mark





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Please protect my address like I protect yours. When sending messages to 
multiple recipients, always use the BCC: (Blind carbon copy) and not To: or 
CC:. Also remove all of the addresses from the message body before forwarding 
the message. These simple measures prevent spy programs from capturing the 
addresses shown in the recipient list and the message body.

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