Good point, and probably much easier for the laptop mfgr. to provide
tech support over the phone if there's the option of setting the laptop
back to a fixed reference state. I had just assumed it was a Microsoft
anti-copying paranoia thing.
The only thing I really miss about XP is that cool pinball game.
On Sun, 17 Jul 2005, Derek Juba wrote:
J. Milgram wrote:
Turns out the "restore" disks that came with the laptop do as feared put
the entire computer back in its original configuration. Any new
partitions you created just disappear. So no way to install it as a
second bootable system.
I wonder if Microsoft realizes the consequences of this policy (I assume
they're behind it). I was starting to think that maybe XP wasn't as
crappy as I thought it would be, and hoped to play around with it
more. Now, that's over, and they've lost an XP user. Not that Linux
users count that much, it's just an odd policy.
Keep in mind that this is a "restore" disk, not a windows install disk, so
its purpose is to restore a damaged system to its original state, not to
install windows to a user's desired location. For a disk like this I think
resetting the partitions is a good thing, since it allows the disk to perform
its intended function even if you've manged to screw the partitions up
somehow.
-Derek Juba
