Yesterday, my laptop running Windows Vista crashed good and proper. I discovered that my drive was still intact, but somehow or another, Windows had managed to corrupt itself.

Normally this would not be too much of an issue. On my previous computer, all I had to do was pop in the Windows XP disc and do a repair, and that sort of issue would be fixed, and all my data would be safe.

this was not the case in this instance. You see, my little HP notebook shipped with an application recovery disk – without a standalone Vista disc. What this means is that if the computer needs a reinstall, then you restore a disc image off this disc and your computer is brand spanking new again back in its original state.

This original state is what gets to me. This process does not allow you to save your data at all. It completely formats and overwrites your harddrive, so I lost everything on it. Fortunately, I am pretty good at keeping backups, so didn’t lose very much, but it is still a major problem not being able to rescue your data.

The only solution for this would be to use a boot disk to get access to the computer and copy stuff off, but, seriously, how many people have boot discs lying around these days.

It was a very long night……

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