Well, I got Ubuntu 7.04 (Feisty Fawn) installed, and even got Compiz-fusion running (with all the shadows, 3d effects, and stuff like that). But because I still haven't found a good Outlook clone that ties securely into our Exchange server, it is time to get back to business.... Vista Business.
I rebooted with the UBCD4Win in the CD drive, and with the USB drive plugged in that we saved the image to yesterday. Not surprisingly the live version of XP we are running on this disk was unable to properly mount the linux partitions, and therefore considered my USB drive as the "C" drive.
I still fired up Self Image and told it to grab c:\backup\HPdc5750\whateverIcalledTheImage.img.gz and put it on Hard Drive #0
It warned me that sometimes when you wipe a drive clean and put a new image over it, you will loose all of the data on the drive you are wiping clean. (Actually, according to them, it happens 10 times out of 10.)
I figure we really don't need Linux on this machine anymore, and I click OK, and it starts decompressing the image and saving it to the hard drive.
In the time it took me to write all of this, it has gotten to 30%. That's probably because I'm decompressing a 20GB file from a USB drive, and because I type fast.
I would guess that when I save the images to a partition on the internal drive in the future it will go much faster. But hey, it has only been about 5 minutes, so 10 to 15 minutes to restore a computer isn't bad!
---Waiting for the image to finish restoring---
Well, it looks like the blank space was being restored pretty quickly, so it has been 25 minutes and we are now at 75%.
Fortunately I had a few other support tasks to take care of in the meantime, including a triple Americano at the cafe we have here. Mmmmm fresh roasted espresso!
---Still Waiting---
Oops! I ran out to help with a support call and came back and it was done! So I don't know how long it took.
I do know that it took no more than 40 minutes, but it may have been just 30 or 35. Either way, when you factor in getting the USB Drive, CD, and kicking the person off their computer, I can expect about an hour of downtime for the user.
Kind of cool.
--Rebooting--
--Logging into Vista Business!--
It works!! That is AWESOME!
Considering I installed a separate boot manager (GRUB, which came with Ubuntu Linux), changed the partition table dramatically, and have wiped the drive a total of 2 times, and I'm able to flawlessly log back into a fully functional Vista Business Environment, I'm pretty excited!!
Wo0T!
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