Charlie Tame wrote in
microsoft.public.windows.vista.general:

Only my opinion but it will probably work out easier to buy W7 and a
new hard drive.

It's interesting you bring that up, for I had considered making changes on
this order.

First, on the point of buying a new hard drive: it's very unlikely I am
going to put a new hard drive in a notebook that has a notorious
reputation for having a poor cooling system (and which usually requires a
supplemental cooling underplatform). It will just damage that replacement
drive quickly as well.

I would probably instead just go all-out and get a new notebook, although
I need to do some homework on who is really building "portable desktops,"
not just notebooks. I don't care how heavy they are (5, 6, 7, 8 kg; 12,
15, 20 lbs). I want a portable that:

1. doesn't overheat at all and does not need supplemental cooling in order
not to do so

2. has a user-serviceable fan for when it gets gummed up and noisy: I use
this portable in places that accumulates that greasy dust covering and we
have a Pekingese in the house, who are notorious for shedding fur...dog
hairs have been pulled from my fan. I don't want a machine that has to be
completely dismantled

3. The power cord connector must be sturdy and not flaky. In fact,
peripheral connections probably have to

4. I figure if a machine is made in which a quality hard drive has a
30,000-40,000 hour life---I have not done an extensive search of
engineering journals---it would be the machine that people with my
preferences should own.

I have web page in which I plead for computer makers to make something
like that.


What I am likely to do is to let this hard drive fail and continue to use
the Pavilion notebook, running Ubuntu (I may switch to Kubuntu) Linux off
my 1 TB WD USB-external drive. I am a scientist who does some web
programmer. I can't think of any more reason for clinging to Windows any
longer, especially if it forces me to run back to OEMs to get my OS
support. And if OEMs like HP chase their customers away, it's my opinion
that they will drag Microsoft's name through the mud with it. My next
portable will likely NOT be an HP and not come with any Microsoft OS pre-
installed (I will insist on it!) and I will just get Linux running on it.

I have been pleased with Vista HomePrem: unlike any previous Win
installation I used (XP, Win9x), it ran for more than 2 years without any
need for a clean install. There was one point when it had been bashed
around by malware and the system became unbootable, but I got something
off the Internet that rescued it and it ran well after that. I suppose if
I ran some disk image backup utility like Genie or Acronis I could get it
to keep going without a clean install for another 2 years. I have
absolutely NO INTEREST in paying for an upgrade to Win7, which is just
Vista (Win6) with the UAC guts pulled out and maybe some "optimization" to
get the user working within the first 2 minutes of power-up rather than
making the user waiting until all the speed-dragging start ups load.

MS should actually be incorporating algorithms into its Windows line that
ask what the user is doing...is the machine keeping keyboard/mouse
interrupt input waiting to do something of low priority, or is it really
trying to keep the user busy with what the user wants to do. This seems
pretty fracking obvious even going back to Windows 3.1.

As for when HP and other makers get around to making the real portable
desktop (they can call it a notebook if they want) that is also a laptop
(without causing 3rd degree burns on the lap), we may have to wait another
10-15 years.


Please post back if you find the solution, it helps others. Thanks.

No solution found at this time, but I may likely post what I eventually
do, and that may not involve HP sending me the recovery CDs which I want
because of what appears to be a flawed business model.


Charlie Tame



Vista User wrote:
My Vista Home Premium (SP2) is corrupted to near unusability. Proof?

1. I click the Firewall control panel and I get an error "Error
loading firewall.cpl. Firewall.cpl is not a valid win32 application"
It sure is not valid: when I go to
C:\Windows\System32\Firewall.cpl, it shows a file of ZERO bytes!

2. I try to click the Windows program installation/repair/removal
control panel, and the window blinks in and out.

It's been 28 months since this Vista installation has been in use,
and often rescued in ways that avoided a clean install entirely.

I think it is now time to do the clean install. For one thing, the
100 GB Seagate drive (the one with the bootable Vista partition)
after about two years revealed 432 read errors with a region of the
hard disk (discovered by 'ddrescue' while using Ubuntu Linux),
probably because the HP Pavilion dv9500t like all HP notebooks is
notorious for overheating, and this failure to cool damages CPUs and
shorten hard disk life.

MY PROBLEM: I am now living on the other side of the world. I made
recovery disks using HP's recovery manager, and I think the recovery
partition is deleted (not sure), but they were left with relatives on
the other side of the world (mistakenly). HP does not answer
requests for how to get recovery disks.

QUESTION: I have recovered the product key for the Vista
installation using product key recovery software (the Microsoft label
on the bottom of the computer is smudged beyond readability, not so
for HP's label). Is there a way to download Vista installation
somehow and use my product key to autheneticate the installation?