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Any tips for setting up a new Win7 laptop and installing lots of software fast?

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MilesAhead:
But it's a bit strange that the system repair disc creation setup would insist on requiring a DVD drive on a system that doesn't have one...
-dr_andus (September 25, 2015, 06:29 PM)
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The program was most likely written for desktop machines which come standard these days with some kind of burner.  No doubt they just copied it over to the Laptop.  They assume if you don't have a physical burner on the system you'll figure out the work-around.  In other words, the program is an afterthought.  They don't care if you get a set of restore discs.  They did just enough to silence the demand for them.

dr_andus:
@Tom, thanks for the Rufus tip! I found instructions on the web and now have bootable USB.  :up:

The program was most likely written for desktop machines which come standard these days with some kind of burner.  No doubt they just copied it over to the Laptop.
-MilesAhead (September 26, 2015, 05:18 AM)
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I was actually using Win7 Pro 64-bit's own Control Panel function for it ("Create a system repair disc"), so maybe that's just the price I have to pay for sticking with Win7... Possibly there is an HP utility somewhere in there that remedies this, I just didn't think to look for it.

On the other hand the "Create a system image" command right next to it allowed me to write to an external USB drive just fine, so it's a bit of an inconsistent behaviour. But all sorted now! Thanks.

40hz:
I don't think it's so much it's inconsistent behavior as it was a design decision. Because there was a time not very long ago when the majority of PCs out there didn't support the ability to boot from a USB device, whereas almost every macine did have a CD/DVD burner. So it didn't make sense to allow a customer to create a rescue disk on a USB key or drive only to later discover their machine couldn't use it.

And although virtually every new machine can boot off USB today, there are still some few that can't. And there's also still a lot of machines in service in businesses that can't either. I run into the latter fairly frequently. Even some of the ones that have a BIOS setting to allow booting from USB won't recognize and use a USB key as a boot device if its storage capacity exceeds a certain size.

dr_andus:
The program was most likely written for desktop machines which come standard these days with some kind of burner.  No doubt they just copied it over to the Laptop.
-MilesAhead (September 26, 2015, 05:18 AM)
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...Possibly there is an HP utility somewhere in there that remedies this, I just didn't think to look for it.
-dr_andus (September 26, 2015, 05:36 AM)
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You might be right about this! Indeed there is an HP app called "HP Recovery Disc Creator," but when I run it, it just says "Error: Failed to find DVD recorder." So it just sounds like they didn't bother, which is a bit surprising, considering that they are pushing a lot of ultrabooks these days with no DVD drives...

Curt:
there is something wrong. This page won't fully open, keeps saying Connecting to wraith808.com...

 :tellme:

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