I see that lots of current machines have a "hidden" partition with
vendor-provided recovery tools, including files that will restore the
user disk to factory settings. The one machine I'm looking at lets me
burn *one* recovery DVD that is bootable.
The limit of *one* DVD must be a software limitation. I assume it
would be fairly easy to work around it, if desired.
I just had a Dell PC in the shop with that hidden partition. Taking a
closer look, I found that it contained a simple Ghost image of the C:\
partition. After restoring that image, per the owner's request, I
performed a 'decrapify', added all of the Windows updates, added
antivirus / antimalware software, added her applications, set up wired
and wireless networking, and did some more cleanup and optimization.
(Continued below)
Is there any way to slipstream patches and service packs into these
machines?
Once it was all set, I created a new Ghost image on an external drive.
Then I expanded the hidden partition, renamed the original Ghost
image, and copied the new Ghost image into the hidden partition. I
gave the new Ghost image the name of the original Ghost image so that
the automated recovery would recover the new image, not the factory
image. This was all per the owner's request. Lastly, I added a text
file to the hidden partition, describing in detail everything I had
done, pointing out which files are factory files and which were added
by me, etc. As a final step, I burned the Ghost image to a DVD and
gave that to her, as well.
I'm tempted to buy a retail copy of Win7 and format the disk down to
bare iron and do a clean install. Having a system disk I can
slipstream would be part of the justification for spending the money.
The method I used is probably overly complicated, but I tested it and
it worked perfectly. The compressed Ghost image was less than 4 GB in
size, and was able to be restored in about 12 minutes on that
particular machine.
Assuming no physical hard drive damage, she can do a full system
restore by hitting an F key during system boot. If that doesn't work,
she can boot from the DVD. Pretty simple to do, even for her, (a
non-geek).
