Puzzled by recovery CD on COMPAQ PRESRIO 1

[gypsy200]

Hi I was exploring a Compaq PRESRIO 4000 windows M E desktop CD recovery disk. I noticed there are only these two files on it. BOOTIBIN 2 KB BIN FILE and BOOTSECT 1440 KB BIN FILE. Are they a type of zip file that has compressed the O S, if not, where is the O S stored… on the H D? Thanks gypsy200

 

[PCmad]

Have you tried searching any hidden files on the CD? There could be a few system or hidden files on the CD. Recovery CD's are generally meant to run as soon as you switch the PC on and you need to check the BIOS has an option to boot from CD. I have recovery CD's for my machines and they have bin files on them, binary files. I even tried putting a CD in and booting from the CD, where I was prompted that my machine would be reset to factory standards if I said Yes. I choose no as I didn't want to do this, but you could do as I did and see what happens. As long as you read any messages fully and always say no to do you want to restore!!

 

[smah]

Generally, there isn't much on the Compaq Quick Restore CD. The bulk of the system information is usually on a special partition on the hard drive, called System_Save or something similar. The CD really only boots the computer and starts copying the drive image from the System_Save partition, back to the C: drive.

 

[killowhat]

smah; doesn't windows have to be on the cd's. as I have two compaqs 5185 has one quick restore cd and the 7588 has two cd's. If you loose your hard drive where is windows copied from. As you know compaqs do not include a copy of windows,I always assumed that windows was on the cd's. There are approximately 75 steps involved in doing a quick restore on my 7588, I know. I do have system save under [D:]. So is [D:] and [C:] on the same hard drive? PEARL

 

[smah]

My wording was mixed up above - I should have said 'Emergency Recovery' cd. I went through this recently with a Presario laptop. When purchased, it came with an 'Emergency Recovery' CD. This CD has very little on it and is used to restore the image off the D: partition. Yes, this is on the same physical drive as the C: partiton.

Unfortunately, if the D: partition is damaged or otherwise unuseable, the 'Emergency Recovery' CD is useless, because there won't be any System_Save image to restore. For this case, we had to contact Compaq and get the two 'Quick Restore' cd's which contain everything including windows. The 'Quick Restore' cd's will partition and format the drive then install the original factory image back to the D: partion and restore to the C: partition from there.

 

[killowhat]

thank you very much for clearing that up for me.PEARL