Hi: I've either owned (or known people who have owned) computers made by HP or Compaq around 2003-2008 that had this "Press F11 for system recovery" and additional tools that could re-install the pre-loaded software, kick off recovery from within Windows, and create recovery CDs/DVDs while ensuring the user gets to make one and only one set of them. On the chance (more like "more often than not) the customer-facing media creation tool failed you, HP would ship you 3 or so DVDs (one bootable, and 2 additional), an "Applications" disk, and on occasion a "drivers and supplementary software" Disk, booting from DVD 1 and feeding the rest in when prompted would re-load everything as if the machine came from the factory (recovery partition, OS, bloatware, and all) then perform the recovery from the newly-created recovery partition. All the machines I've seen the is were branded as either "Pavilion" or "Presario" and ran some variation of Windows XP. Around this time, Gateway was still shipping actual install media for Windows XP, software installers, then around 2003 is when seemingly every other manufacturer started doing this "we're going to put the backup copy of everything in a proprietary format on a partition of the drive that's being backed up and entrust flimsy utilities that seem as if a child made them to create recovery media (and put the onus of creating such on the end-user), should the end-user fail to do so; they need to pay us to get factory restore disks and wait while we use the slowest shipping method possible to get them." thing. So, I'd like to know the following: 1) What is that software and where do I obtain a copy of it or something similar so I can play with it in my lab as to figure out why it seemed so flimsy and how they pulled it off? 2) Why did the OEMs think this was a good idea in the first place? I remember a laptop from around 2005 that shipped 1) Operating System CD (an actual copy of windows XP) 1) "Applications and drivers" DVD that had actual installer files for the programs and drivers that came pre-loaded on the machine and a handy setup utility that offered a "Quick! Restore" (install everything) or a "customized restore" that let you pick and choose which drivers, programs, etc. you wanted instead of just vomiting it all up on the OS install, 1) OEM trial copy of Office 2003, 1) Microsoft Works 9 and Money CD-ROM, and 1) copy of Norton Antivirus 200x (don't remember the version number)... so if the time-honored tradition of shipping actual recovery media was a thing around 2005, why was this a thing and how did we get here? 3) Was HP/Compaq the first ones to do this sort of shenanigans or were there other OEMs doing it that I just never have had interaction with their products? Sorry for the long rant, but this concept has always interested me and now that I have a reasonably good computer and plenty of time on my hands along with virtualization technology, I get to play with this stuff in the lab and also make use of it for fast(er) VM spin-ups and restores. If I can find pictures (or even ISOs) of the media a remember, I'll link them
Always had Acer laptops in the past and they did (and still do) the same. It was called "Acer D2D Recovery". Required a special MBR on the boot disk, and if that was overwritten, it essentially failed. Lol. Before Windows had proper support for recovery partitions, at least Acer used a simple Acronis TrueImage image file on a special partition, seemingly with a custom made interface that could only restore that image to the main partition, overwriting everything.
Had a Gateway laptop around 2009 (when Windows 7) was still new) that did the same D2D recovery BS and Gateway’s recovery disks were ABSOLUTELY GARBAGE USELESS ( not even as wall art) … I don’t know how many “defective” sets of those I got before I finally got a working set. Arrrgh! Just thinking about it makes my blood boil… my solution ( buy another laptop HP, get windows 7 AIO, and manually install OS and drivers to the Gateway)… I remember when Gateway actually gave you a dang binder so chalked full of actually useful disks, it could stop a small car (win 98 SE, Quicken 99, Works Suite 99, Streets 98, WordPerfect suite 2000 with Dragon speech to text, a truck ton of AOL disks, and a master restore CD…) again that binder was so chalked full of goodies, it could slow (if not stop a small car)
From what I know, Gateway is essentially Acer, so, it's no wonder they did the same sh*t (and sh*tty it was). Beginning with Vista, you was advised to create your own set of recovery disks ASAP, and that was a good advice, as the D2D recovery was prone to just stop working at one point, usually, when the first maintenance software overwrote the special MBR with the standard one.
It was not their best idea anyway. The reason for not adding media? Money, like always. Only a fraction of the users ever needed them, so, they deemed it not necessary anymore. It's exactly like the hipster sheeple helped to ruin Windows.Functionality? No need. Eye candy, yes, yes, yes!
I had a sneaky suspicion it was money but was hoping for a less-scummy yet more reasonable reason (e.g. Microsoft strong-arming them with licensing BS, government oversight, etc.)
I don't have any knowledge of the backroom deals. But cost cutting is definitely one prime reason. These days, also the demise of optical drives and media. Theoretically, they could ship a small USB drive containing the recovery files, they are dirt cheap. Doesn't look like that will become reality, ever.
no, but HP encourages the user to make their own using a personal flash drive the user already owns (or will purchase expressly for that purpose). The only issue I see with flash drives as something so critical is 1) so small they really easily lost or destroyed and/or 2) they can be overwritten (either intentionally if the user is short on storage or unintentionally by malware)
There are USB drives with a physical slider to write-protect them, but they are very rare to find. That's my main concern with USB drives, they cannot be write-protected easily and are thus vulnerable to unwanted modifications.