Good Evening Steve,
...and thanks for the prompt reply to my post.
Your suggestion is a good one and one that I would readily adopt if Dell
supplied a reliable system restore option...but they don't (spend a few
hours perusing DellTalk Forum @ support.dell.com and you'll learn what I
mean).
As things stand, coutless frustrated Dell owners (myself included) must
contend with the fact that instead of offering a simple, bullet proof system
restore/recovery CD, Dell has chosen to ghost the factory image to a
reserved area on the hard drive. This seems like a workable solution, but
it rarely if ever works (and has never worked in my experience) because the
ghosted image is usually corrupted almost immediately after unpacking by
routine hard disk use and maintenance.
As for PartitionMagic...forget it; you can instantly kiss the ghosted image
goodbye if you let PM do its' thing. I could go on about the maddening
aspects of working with Dell machines, but that's a topic for another
thread.
Now back to my original problem and question:
I may be wrong, but I seem vaguely to remember reading somewhere that a full
version of Windows 2000 Professional will recognize Windows Me and will
automatically create a dual boot setup with boot manager. I think that's
the route I'd like to persue with this machine if I can back out of the
Windows 2000 installation cleanly when my benchmarking work is done.
Thanks again for your help (and the information on the limitations on the
upgrade version of Win2K).
I'm all ears...anybody else care to give this a shot ???
--
Jeffrey Ottie
[log in to unmask]
Original Message ---
From: "Steve Sabljak" <[log in to unmask]>
To: <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: Saturday, December 30, 2000 5:48 PM
Subject: Re: [PCSOFT] Short-term Dual Boot
Since the Dell is fresh from the factory with no data files or added
applications installed, would it not be possible to do what you usually do
using
Partition Magic, etc., run your tests, and then use the (I would assume)
included Dell restore/recovery CD to reset the machine back to it's original
condition when you are done? That would seem to be the surest, safest way
of
delivering a "new" PC that the final owner/user will have no knowledge of
the
tests you performed.
One caveat -- if you are installing an UPGRADE version of Win2k, it will NOT
recognize ME as a version of Windows you are upgrading from, and will not
complete the install process. Take this from someone who didn't read the
package close enough and learned the hard way....
Steve
PCSOFT's List Owner's:
Bob Wright<[log in to unmask]>
Drew Dunn<[log in to unmask]>
|
