On Fri, Feb 19, 2010 at 1:56 PM, Eric House <[email protected]> wrote:
> This is a rant, a warning, and a request for help. The help part: any > ideas on how to get Windows 7 Starter onto a netbook for which it's > licensed without buying a disk? > > The story: we've been waiting for the "Pinetrail" version of the Atom > to show up in netbooks, and so when Costco started carrying the > Samsung N-150 I snapped one up. As soon as it arrived I installed > Ubuntu "Netbook Remix". The installer for that distro doesn't support > LVM and won't let you install without creating a swap partition, so a > minimum of two partitions were required. Samsung's setup used three, > so I wiped it, figuring I could restore later (after enabling LVM and > freeing up the swap partition), and moved on. > > Big mistake. The device does not ship with any recovery media. > Worse, Samsung doesn't make disks available (doesn't even sell them), > and won't honor the warranty on the device unless it's running the > software it shipped with. (I didn't ask what happens if you have a > virus that wipes your drive, having already admitted that I'd wiped > mine on-purpose.) There was nothing in the packaging to tell me I was > losing the warranty -- but that's not really my problem because Costco > has a great return policy. :-) > > That said, I'd rather keep the device if I can set it up to dual-boot > to keep the warranty intact. If not, consider yourselves warned away > from an otherwise excellent product. I wonder how much Samsung's > saving much by not including recovery media (as, e.g., Acer does on > similar products I've purchased). > > Can anybody suggest strategies for restoring? If, for example, I > could find somebody with an unmolested similar model is it likely that > dd-ing the first few gigs of the HD (where the special boot blocks and > recovery partition lie) would work? > > Thanks, > > --Eric > -- > > ****************************************************************************** > * From the desktop of: Eric House, [email protected] > * > * Crosswords 4.4 for WinMobile plays over the internet: > xwords.sf.net * > > ****************************************************************************** > A few things I notice: -I have not in my experience heard or seen a netbook, which has no optical drive, including any kind of restore media. The only one I have actually purchased myself is an Acer Aspire One, but I have seen and worked on several others. Mine came with WinXP, and no restore media. (It is dual boot WinXP and Fedora now) I will have to double check but I don't think it has a typical restore partition either. IMHO, for similar price as it used to cost to include restore media, the manufacturers might include a USB flash drive with restore media on it, or at least a recovery partition with some kind of automated "install to flash drive" type option. -NEVER admit you wiped it yourself to the techs.... ;) Just say a friend was messing around with it, and contracted a mean ole virus. -There are guides on the net out there for putting a Win7 installer on a USB flash drive. If you can get a copy of Win7, you can put it on a flash drive and install from that. You could use for ex. Parted (or Gparted or Qparted) and create a blank partition at the beginning of the drive for Win7, moving the Linux partitions down. ---------- Matt M. LinuxKnight _______________________________________________ PLUG mailing list [email protected] http://lists.pdxlinux.org/mailman/listinfo/plug
