Could not upgrade to windows 10

[Spork Schivago]

Re: Could not upgrade to windows 10

I take the data off the machine because I'm going to destroy everything on the machine and start it over from scratch, so that way, anything wrong with the machine software wise is automatically fixed. A lot of times, problems come from the user. They download something that isn't right or the mess with the settings and screw things up, or they install software, then remove it, but it doesn't getting fully removed. This way, everything's gone and it's a fresh, clean install. A lot of times, companies package bloatware with their PCs and they come loaded with garbage. I offer the customer two options, restore it to factory condition with the bloatware, or install a clean copy of Windows without the bloatware. Almost always, they go for the clean install. That bloatware always seems to cause issues.

But the users, they store stuff like pictures on their PC, they bookmark websites they visit frequently, they auto-saved website passwords and have auto-fill data. When I redo a PC, I have to restore that stuff, but I cannot do that unless I made a backup of it and stored it off the PC first. You follow?


When I'm working on a PC, I try to figure out how it got screwed up. Before I do anything, I look at the machine and say is it a virus, is it something one did, do they have kids, etc? I try to think of ways to prevent it from happening again in the future. This seems to work.

If I had a hard drive for every customer I've encountered, man, I couldn't even imagine. The actual amount of work I have to do on a PC to fully restore it (backups and everything) is maybe an hour. Most of the time, it's hit a button, come back a few hours later. Having an external hard drive that had an image of their PC wouldn't save me any time. I'd still have to do windows updates (and possibly try to figure out why they're not working after restoring the hard drive (usually an outdated Update Agent), I'd still have to backup all their personal files before I restored the hard drive from their external, I'd still have to go through and look for newer drivers.

I bet if I started telling every customer they needed to buy an extra hard drive, they'd tell me they'd take their PCs elsewheres!

Your hard drive is 250GB, the laptop I repaired a few days ago had a 1TB hard drive. In the end, before I started getting out of the PC repair and started getting into more fun stuff, I wasn't seeing hard drives less than 500GB or so. Most where somewhere between 500GB and 1.5TB.

What do you do if the hard drive on the shelf fails? Now you're responsible for that. You made the customer purchase a hard drive that died. I bought a new Maxtor hard drive and let it sit on a shelf for a good 15 years. I went to plug it in and it was dead. It was stored in a closet, untouched for all those years. I guess there's a chance it could have been dead when I bought it. But externals can die just sitting there, albeit a lot less likely.

For everyone else that repairs computers, do you think it'd be a wise idea to start having customers purchase an external hard drive to clone their current hard drive in case something happens and they need to redo their PC? Or do you guys think it's a better idea to just pop a disc in and reinstall if their PC needs to be redone? I'd like to hear what the community thinks on this topic. It's got me interested!

[Spork Schivago]

Re: Could not upgrade to windows 10

I mean, worse case, for a couple cents, you could just make a recovery DVD that does the same thing as the extra hard drive, without paying for the actual extra hard drive.

[keeney123]

Re: Could not upgrade to windows 10

take the data off the machine because I'm going to destroy everything on the machine and start it over from scratch,

I do not want to start all over from scratch. Also, The hard drive last for 10 years. If I get a knew machine I can also use it then for the same thing.

I just think you do to much work with all the things you. I just press one button and off it goes. As I say if you a really paranoid then you could have two back ups. It would be hard for me to believe sitting on a self doing nothing that a hard drive gets screwed up. I suppose it is possible, but not probable. At some point one takes risk in life. I just try to lower those risk the best I can.

Yes, I did not see your 15 years. Yes 10 years is the limit for hd. So lets figure this $60/10= $6 a year.

[ChaosLegionnaire]

Re: Could not upgrade to windows 10

u dont need to clone the whole physical disk of 250-500gb etc. just create an os partition dedicated for the os only. make it 20-30gb in size for recent windows e.g. vista/7/8/10. 20gb is enuff to fit on a bd-r or bd-re. 30gb is enuff to fit on a 32gb thumbdrive or micro sd card. that way if ur os ever gets borked by virus, malware etc. just overwrite the existing os partition with the backup copy of the os partition on the blu-ray or thumbdrive. this wont take more than 10-15mins to copy/restore 20-30gb of data to the hard disk and u're good to go. the rest of your data can be restored from the external hard drive backup in case of cryptoware/ransomware infection. the important point with this is the fast restore back to uptime duration with the os for enterprise mission critical computers.

i attached a screenshot of how i partitioned my hard drive on my p4 htpc rig. its a wd caviar blue 500gb ide hard drive (wd5000aakb). drive c (fat32) is the win98se and fixed size 256mb win98se swapfile plus 2gb winxp swapfile partition. i put the swapfiles there cuz the beginning of the hard drive is the faster part. drive d (fat32) is the winxp partition. i have the winxp partition in fat32 so its much easier to access my winxp stuff in win98se. if i didnt, i would need to have two instances of the same stuff and that would waste space on the drive. the free space available in the two os partitions may be alarming to some but its fine... never had a non-booting issue due to lack of free space since i dont store my stuff in those os partitions. together, the two os partition disk images make 7789MB of data which barely fits on either an 8gb thumbdrive or dual-layer dvd.

drive e (fat32) is the high performance data partition. i use it to store games that use a streaming engine to load data from the hard drive without having to go thru load screens. drive f, g, h (fat32) are for medium and low performing stuff. drive u and v are ntfs drives meant for media file storage since i use this pc as a htpc as well and the video files typically exceed 4gb which is the file size limit for fat32.

together, the first 6 fat32 drives make up 128GiB (binary bytes) or 137GB (decimal bytes) which is the 28-bit lba addressing limit for win98se. thats why i chose partition sizes like that. ~30gb is also the limit winxp will let u format a drive as fat32. anything 31gb or larger, winxp forces u to use ntfs and doesnt display the option to format as fat32.

drives n, o, p, q are the virtual cd/dvd drives for mounting drive images for games that require the game disc in the drive. much easier than hunting around for the game disc when u wanna play urgently, which then becomes an anti-climax when u cant find the game disc and u lose interest... also saves u from security issues when it comes to using no-cd crack .exe files. speeds up game loading as well when the cd/dvd drive image is on the hard drive.

btw, for my own computers, i always make a backup image of the os partition after installing everything fresh. that way, instead of reformatting and reinstalling the os, i just overwrite the os partition if i want a fresh install of windows again. saves the hassle of 30mins to 1 hour of work having to reinstall the os from scratch and setting up the drivers again. i am aware u can slipstream drivers into the os install but isnt it faster if u spend the time just to make a backup copy of a fresh os install for a specific machine instead?

of course, this wont work for spork who sets up and manages hundreds of different machines a day. but for me who has only a handful of machines, it works faster for my usage scenario. however, spork, u might wanna consider just storing your customer's os partition or just compress the os related folders like "windows", "program files" and "documents and settings" etc. into one rar file, then password protect it to encrypt the data to protect your customer's privacy (this step may or may not be necessary depending on privacy laws in your state or country) and then storing it somewhere on your 4tb hard drive. if your customer's pc ever comes back, just restore the os from the compressed rar file then boot the os with only that one hard drive connected and nothing else!! much more space efficient for you imo instead of cloning the whole physical disk. of course, u have to ensure that 4tb drive doesnt get attacked by virus/malware/cryptoware/ransomware or else u'll have to do a install from scratch from the dvd to preserve the "sanctity" of the os that it is "clean".

and if u wanna have two hard drives as backup, make sure they are different brands or different hard drive models but same capacity. this is because of the hard lesson learned from raid 5 failures: identical model hard drives have a higher tendency to fail at the exact same time and u end up with two bad backup drives at the same time!!

[Spork Schivago]

Re: Could not upgrade to windows 10

u dont need to clone the whole physical disk of 250-500gb etc. just create an os partition dedicated for the os only. make it 20-30gb in size for recent windows e.g. vista/7/8/10. 20gb is enuff to fit on a bd-r or bd-re. 30gb is enuff to fit on a 32gb thumbdrive or micro sd card. that way if ur os ever gets borked by virus, malware etc. just overwrite the existing os partition with the backup copy of the os partition on the blu-ray or thumbdrive. this wont take more than 10-15mins to copy/restore 20-30gb of data to the hard disk and u're good to go. the rest of your data can be restored from the external hard drive backup in case of cryptoware/ransomware infection. the important point with this is the fast restore back to uptime duration with the os for enterprise mission critical computers.

When I redo a customer's PC, I'll create a special OS partition, but I generally make it 40GB in size. Keep in mind though, we're not talking personal PC here, we're talking customer's PCs. The OS partition, to me, is the best way, because then we don't have to worry about data backups so much. I still backup their auto-fill data, their favourites, etc. I'll still clone the hard drive, just in case. I won't keep it forever though. That way, I know no matter what, I can always restore it to the condition it came in (ie, they refuse to pay me my money after I fix it).

i attached a screenshot of how i partitioned my hard drive on my p4 htpc rig. its a wd caviar blue 500gb ide hard drive (wd5000aakb). drive c (fat32) is the win98se and fixed size 256mb win98se swapfile plus 2gb winxp swapfile partition. i put the swapfiles there cuz the beginning of the hard drive is the faster part. drive d (fat32) is the winxp partition. i have the winxp partition in fat32 so its much easier to access my winxp stuff in win98se. if i didnt, i would need to have two instances of the same stuff and that would waste space on the drive. the free space available in the two os partitions may be alarming to some but its fine... never had a non-booting issue due to lack of free space since i dont store my stuff in those os partitions. together, the two os partition disk images make 7789MB of data which barely fits on either an 8gb thumbdrive or dual-layer dvd...

This is my partition scheme:

fdisk -l /dev/sda
Disk /dev/sda: 2.7 TiB, 3000592982016 bytes, 5860533168 sectors
Units: sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 4096 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 4096 bytes / 4096 bytes
Disklabel type: gpt
Disk identifier: 21C55480-B314-422C-A6C6-6CBB5D8F566D

Device     Start    End  Sectors Size Type
/dev/sda1    2048  41945087  41943040  20G Linux filesystem
/dev/sda2  41945088  62910463  20965376  10G Linux filesystem
/dev/sda3  62910464 272623615 209713152 100G Linux filesystem
/dev/sda4 272623616 5856077823 5583454208 2.6T Linux filesystem




fdisk -l /dev/sdb
Disk /dev/sdb: 1.8 TiB, 2000398934016 bytes, 3907029168 sectors
Units: sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
Disklabel type: gpt
Disk identifier: E51CA9BF-2528-497B-9C9D-B697FBB39F2E

Device   Start    End  Sectors Size Type
/dev/sdb1  2048 3907029134 3907027087 1.8T EFI System

btw, for my own computers, i always make a backup image of the os partition after installing everything fresh. that way, instead of reformatting and reinstalling the os, i just overwrite the os partition if i want a fresh install of windows again. saves the hassle of 30mins to 1 hour of work having to reinstall the os from scratch and setting up the drivers again. i am aware u can slipstream drivers into the os install but isnt it faster if u spend the time just to make a backup copy of a fresh os install for a specific machine instead?

You still have to look for drivers anyways though, if it's been an extended period of time. I can see why you might do this with a personal PC, but with a customer's PC, to me, it just doesn't make since.

of course, this wont work for spork who sets up and manages hundreds of different machines a day. but for me who has only a handful of machines, it works faster for my usage scenario. however, spork, u might wanna consider just storing your customer's os partition or just compress the os related folders like "windows", "program files" and "documents and settings" etc. into one rar file, then password protect it to encrypt the data to protect your customer's privacy (this step may or may not be necessary depending on privacy laws in your state or country) and then storing it somewhere on your 4tb hard drive. if your customer's pc ever comes back, just restore the os from the compressed rar file then boot the os with only that one hard drive connected and nothing else!! much more space efficient for you imo instead of cloning the whole physical disk. of course, u have to ensure that 4tb drive doesnt get attacked by virus/malware/cryptoware/ransomware or else u'll have to do a install from scratch from the dvd to preserve the "sanctity" of the os that it is "clean".

Thankfully, it's not 100's a day! But when I was doing it as a living, in the end there, it equivalated to around 1 PC a day. Your idea of the custom RAR is good, but I decided to go with the custom recovery partition in the end. It was a real pain figuring out how to set them up originally, but after the first couple, it got a lot easier. Whenever a PC came back, I still needed to backup their newest data (unless, they actually used the data partition like they were supposed to, which isn't always the case). I think the last one I did was a Vista recovery partition. Because I really don't want to fix computers anymore, I try very hard not to work on them. It's driven me a bit mad I think over the years. But now, when a friend wants it redone, I don't do as much as I used to. I'll fix the problem, but I'm not making recovery discs or recovery partitions much anymore. I'll still do the 40GB OS partition for most of them. There's a couple people that don't like it that way for whatever reason.

and if u wanna have two hard drives as backup, make sure they are different brands or different hard drive models but same capacity. this is because of the hard lesson learned from raid 5 failures: identical model hard drives have a higher tendency to fail at the exact same time and u end up with two bad backup drives at the same time!!

Really? I never knew this! I do have a Western Digital and I have a Seagate but the Seagate worries me a bit. I was just checking, I think I actually have a 2TB drive and a 3TB drive. One of them, I use for my personal backups and for the customer's hard drives, the other I use as my main OS. I want to setup a RAID 5 one of these days. There's newer RAIDs as well. Do you have any experience with them? I think 6, you can lose two hard drives at a time and still be good, but you only have access to n-2 hard drives.

[Spork Schivago]

Re: Could not upgrade to windows 10

I know where you might have gotten the 100's of PCs. When I used to work in Deposit, I managed a lot of computers, around 500 or so. But only 100 or so in the main building, a bunch down in the Kentucky office and then the rest over in the various offices over in China.

I was thinking, maybe the WSUS makes things a bit easier. For the most part, that takes care of almost all the drivers. With laptops, there's a few I cannot add to the WSUS because the laptops need proprietary drivers, like for the mouse pads, for instance. I might be able to install a Toshiba mouse driver on an HP computer and have it work, but it causes issues. In cases like this, the laptop manufacturer modified the drivers, specifically for that PC. So I have to grab them from the manufacturer's site. I think WSUS goes by the DEV and VEN IDs.