Summary: I recently had to rebuild my Window Vista laptop after a hard disk failure. Here's what I installed, and in the order that I installed it.
As I mentioned in my free weekly newsletter, I recently suffered a catastrophic hard drive failure in my Dell Latitude D620 laptop. Fortunately, my data was all backed up so there was no serious loss, but when the replacement drive arrived it did mean it was time for me to do what I frequently end up advising my readers: reformat and reinstall everything.
I thought it might be interesting to some to enumerate exactly what "everything" means on my machine.
•
On installing the new drive and seeing that it was working, my first step was actually not to install anything at all, but rather run SpinRite. The intent was to identify and remove from use any bad sectors on this new drive before I began to rely on it.
Windows Vista: Installing Windows Vista was a multi-step process that boiled down to:
-
Boot from the DVD installation media, tell it to use the entire disk, format it as NTFS, and install a clean copy of Windows Vista.
-
Visit Windows Update repeatedly and take all available updates until no more were shown as available/necessary.
Note that, yes, that requires connecting to the internet with a machine that's not fully patched in order to become fully patched. The safest way to connect to the internet before you're fully patched is through a router. If that's not available, then make sure that the Windows Firewall is on (not to worry, Windows Vista is very insistent as you install it that you do so - a good thing in my book).
Drivers: The copy of Windows Vista, although supplied by Dell, didn't have drivers for every possible device that Dell includes on all their computers, and included instructions to visit their web site for the latest and greatest. As it turns out I needed to do so for only one device: the trackpad.
A word of caution: make sure you download and install the drivers for the correct version of the operating system you have. I initially made a mistake and downloaded the Windows XP drivers, which installed and appeared to work. The only problem is that I began to experience the "wandering pointer" symptom - the mouse pointer would move at random times and mouse buttons would "click" without being pushed. Once I determined that I'd made that mistake downloading and installing the Windows Vista drivers cleared the problem right up.
TrueCrypt: This is a laptop, a portable device I travel with all the time, and keeping my data encrypted is a key part of my security strategy. That, of course, means installing TrueCrypt.
Stuff: This is where things get a little geeky and I wave my hands a little and just say that there's are a number of small tools and utilities and scripts and other "stuff" that I simply copy to the machine. As I said, it's pretty geeky (those who recognize will understand when I say that there's a "/usr/bin" folder on the machine). This includes perhaps a hundred or more small tools - Process Explorer is one good example. I also install Perl (a scripting language) at this time, since most of the "batch files" I write are actually written in Perl.
FireFox: I run FireFox as my primary web browser and since I'm about to embark a bit of downloading of other programs, FireFox is the next thing to be installed.
Roboform: Once FireFox is installed it's time for RoboForm. I also copy over my (encrypted) personal information TrueCrypt container, and instantly have all passwords for all sites I have accounts on.
Thunderbird: one of the things I love about Thunderbird is the ease with which you can move from machine to machine. In a nutshell, I:
-
Installed Thunderbird
-
Copied the entire tree of email folders from my desktop machine, where I'd been temporarily managing my email
-
Made a tweak to Thunderbird's profile to point at my custom location for those folders
-
Fired up Thunderbird and began dealing with email.
And that "tweak" step isn't necessary if you use Thunderbird's default location for email folders.
•
At this point, I had a working machine. By that I mean that my laptop had been restored to a state where I could use it for my day-to-day operations, and so I did. My laptop was "back in business".
Naturally, there was more to install, over time, as I came across other things for which I'd been using the laptop.
•
Microsoft Money: I manage my finances using Microsoft Money, and the data files were already on the laptop by virtue of having copied over the encrypted container.
Hamachi: if I'm on the road and want to access a machine at home, it's Hamachi that I use to set up a VPN.
Adobe Acrobat: while I often recommend FoxIt, I elected to try the latest version of Acrobat to read PDFs.
TightVNC Server: while I can and do use the built in Remote Desktop functionality built into Windows, I also occasionally use TightVNC.
Microsoft Office: Word, Excel, Powerpoint - I use 'em. I installed the latest 2007 version.
7-zip: while it's actually part of the "stuff" I copied over earlier, 7-zip is slightly more functional if you take the time to actually run its installation program.
VLC: VLC is the media player I use most often these days. My laptop often accompanies me on my treadmill as I exercise, and I'll often be listening to Security Now using VLC as I walk.
TopStyle: TopStyle is my HTML/CSS editor. I'm writing this article using it.
VIM: VIM, or GVim, is my text editor. Older than dirt, perhaps, but it's reliably present on every platform I can ever imagine using.
•
That's about the point I stopped keeping track. As with all computer geeks, I'm sure there's stuff that I've installed since, and some of that has even already been uninstalled, but that's the way of computers. Someday, due to replacement, hard disk failure or just software rot I'm sure I'll repeat the exercise.
There are a couple of interesting things I didn't mention above that are worth noting:
I haven't yet installed anti-virus software. Don't be like me: install something right after making sure Windows is fully up to date. (Windows Defender was automatically installed as anti-spyware with Vista). Besides being extremely internet savvy and able to avoid viruses on my own, I'm considering which package to install and perhaps evaluate as part of that process.
I didn't talk much about data. First, I have to reiterate that I did not lose any significant data due to having a well thought out backup strategy. Restoring data that I cared about was as simple as copying the files or entire folder trees back over from my desktop, as needed.
Time: all in all, it probably took maybe 4 hours of my time over the course of a couple of days to get my laptop back into its fully usable state once again. Many of the operations, like installing Windows itself, are "start it and walk away for a while" kind of things.
Related:
-
What software do you use? I get lots of questions about what's the best software for various situations. I can't answer them all, but I can tell you what I'm using. (Slightly out of date.)
-
What Security Software do you Recommend? I have recommendations for specific products in various places on the site. Here's a short single page summary.
-
What kind of maintenance should I do to avoid software rot? Regular maintenance of your computer can help keep it performing well, but some things like software rot, can only be delayed not avoided entirely.
Article C3656 - February 22, 2009
I use Microsoft's Home Server to back up my three clients. I pick and choose what I want to back up and each night it backs them all up. I can restore any of the three with the restore function.
Posted by: Don Williams at February 24, 2009 4:34 PMThunderbird has a portable version for use on a thumbdrive.
Posted by: steven at February 24, 2009 4:52 PMLeo,
I recently had a HD failure. When I would sometimes get “bootable disk not found” on starting the PC, I should have known the HD was going.
1. I format the HD with FDISK formatting the C drive to be in FAT32. The C drive uses the entire master HD. I have an old PC that accepts the 98SE ESD floppy. I format the HD in the old PC and then install it on my primary PC when formatted.
Posted by: Richard L. Broberg at February 24, 2009 5:34 PM2. Then I install XP Home and have XP convert the C drive to NTFS.
3. I then update Internet Explorer to the version I want.
4. I then install Norton firewall and anti-virus and download the updates.
5. I then run the Norton maintenance routines (registry repair and defragging the drives).
6. I then go to Microsoft Update and download only the “express” high priority updates.
7. I then hook up the slave drive that has all my data on it. All my data partitions are FAT32.
8. Next I run a full system anti-virus scan.
9. Microsoft Office XP Pro 2002 is then installed. (Word, Outlook, Excel).
10. I then install third party programs as needed.
I agree with Dave - Acronis the way to go here... I can't tell you how many times I have just "restored" instead of toubleshooting a computer problem - saves me time and phone calles (i.e. money) to Microsoft to get help.
Posted by: Sandy Smith at February 24, 2009 9:06 PMI don't like having one large partition, instead, my preference is for two partitions. Windows and installed applications go into the C disk partition and my data files into the other partition.
This is done, mostly, so that image copies of the C disk can be made quickly and are not that big (less stuff to copy). Also, image backups can be restored without clobbering data files. Disk image backups of the C disk are made once a month prior to installing patches, while data is backed up daily, at the least.
There are lots of details of course, but this seems like the best general approach to me.
Posted by: Michael Horowitz at February 24, 2009 9:06 PMI use and recommend Macrium Reflect (either free or paid version). I've rebuilt my computer after a complete failure in less than two hours. Make a fresh image once a week and you’re covered. You can even mount the image as a drive to restore individual files if you wish.
Posted by: Duane at February 25, 2009 3:48 AMI have used the "RAW" formatting on three occasions One my own 500 gbs hard drive and twice on other friends h.d's.
Posted by: B KEARNEY at February 25, 2009 10:26 AMUseing raw has on all three occasions resulted in the seemingly corrupt h.d. being restored (almost) to a 'before' corruption state -naturally without any data. "RAW" is available in windows x.p and Vista. Three out of three is not bad. I suggest people try it before discardind the h.d.
I'm a bit disappointed that you didn't say that you restored an Acronis image. I've often wondered if it's better to reload all the software and then reload the backed up "My Documents".
01-Mar-2009
When I redid my last computer. I put all the programs in it that I run. Also ran Windows Updates. Then Ghosted it. Then put the backed up files that I had saved to an external hard drive. Waa la All done.....Now if it crashes I just put the Ghost copy in and in no time I'm back up and running......
Posted by: M Guthrie at February 28, 2009 8:52 PMThe link you provided in the comments for "Why didn't you restore from an Disk Image?" doesn't work.
I'm especially curious because I took your advice to use True Image a long time ago, but I've been having lots of trouble with it recently and their help hasn't helped much. I'm using version 10. I'm unable to update because my slow dialup prevents it. I believe there's a problem with interactions with AVG anti-virus, but even turning it off while trying to make incremental backup fails. I back up to an external USB hard drive, but it takes most of a day to restore, which I've had to do once. I also tell it to verify after making an image and that always takes longer than it took to make the image. Any suggestions would be helpful.
I'm still a big fan of Acronis and use it regularly. Hard to say what your specifics issues might be. My first reaction to the slowness is to wonder if you have a USB 2.0 interface - an older 1.1 would definitely be slow. (Though I've run Acronis over that as well without problems other than speed.)
10-Mar-2009