I have a quick question about the "System Recovery" partition on Emachine/Gateway computers with WinXP (Home). I'd like to do the non-destructive Windows reinstallation, but I'm a little nervous about setting up internet and network connections again (such a pain in the butt). If you do a non-destructive Windows reinstallation using the "system recovery" program on the partition, and you decide that you want to go back (even if just temporarily), can you use F8 and select "last known good configuration" to return it to pre-reinstallation condition? If not, can you use a disc image program like Acronis "True Image" to write a disc image to an external hard drive, and use that disc image to return the drive back to it's original state?
Sorry if this is a dumb question, but I've never done either (reinstallation or disc image) before.
Also, for what it's worth, if anyone has any experience with the Gateway/Emachine "System Recovery" program, I have a question about the process itself. In non-destructive mode, does the program actually do anything other than taking the root directory and tree, putting it in a folder called "my backup", reinstalling windows, and then moving the root directory back? ie. if I copied everything in the root directory except for the Windows folder, then reformatted the disk and reinstalled windows, and then recopied the folders in the root directory back to the hard drive, would I essentially be doing the same thing?
"dipdog" <dipdog.31ytjn@no.email.invalid> wrote in message
news:dipdog.31ytjn@no.email.invalid...
>
> I have a quick question about the "System Recovery" partition on
> Emachine/Gateway computers with WinXP (Home). I'd like to do the
> non-destructive Windows reinstallation, but I'm a little nervous about
> setting up internet and network connections again (such a pain in the
> butt). If you do a non-destructive Windows reinstallation using the
> "system recovery" program on the partition, and you decide that you
> want
> to go back (even if just temporarily), can you use F8 and select "last
> known good configuration" to return it to pre-reinstallation
> condition?
> If not, can you use a disc image program like Acronis "True Image" to
> write a disc image to an external hard drive, and use that disc image
> to
> return the drive back to it's original state?
> Sorry if this is a dumb question, but I've never done either
> (reinstallation or disc image) before.
>
> Also, for what it's worth, if anyone has any experience with the
> Gateway/Emachine "System Recovery" program, I have a question about
> the
> process itself. In non-destructive mode, does the program actually do
> anything other than taking the root directory and tree, putting it in
> a
> folder called "my backup", reinstalling windows, and then moving the
> root directory back? ie. if I copied everything in the root directory
> except for the Windows folder, then reformatted the disk and
> reinstalled
> windows, and then recopied the folders in the root directory back to
> the
> hard drive, would I essentially be doing the same thing?
>
> thanks for your help!
Scott
My advice :
If you have a spare hard disc and a copy of Acronis ?
Clone the original onto the new.
Disconnect the original and make sure you can boot up with the new.
Then, start experimenting.
If all goes awry, start again and again ...
This way you have never changed the old disk.
Thanks for the replies. I'm not very familiar with mirroring a drive; so I guess what I was trying to get at was if I could use Acronis to create a partition on the external drive with a mirror copy of the original drive that I could boot from and possibly recopy to the original hard drive if I didn't like the new windows installation. Sounds like that is possible; I'm going to read up some more.
Gateway/Emachine "System Recovery" 
Linear Mode
