Yesterday my new mobo arrived (will talk about that elsewhere) and I wanted to clean install Windows 8.1.
1) DRIVE TOOLS (for a tool like me..) My main drive, a 1TB Samsung SSD, has 2 partitions. I used Paragon Hard Drive Suite Pro (or how it is calleD) 2014 for the 2nd time in my life.
I bought it to go from MBR to GPT disks, and it was a disaster, it looks easy, you click and it says "restart needed" and you never see the program again... nor your drive...
This happened again yesterday. I formated everything except the 2nd partition (with data).
I was unaware that Paragon just LETS YOU DELETE "NO NAME" SMALL PARTITION, THAT IS THE GPT "table"
So again I was without luck, and I tried to recover the particion (i did not format or alter the partitions). I even payed to ESEAUS for their full version (as the Paragon suite didn't fix anything after hourse of "disk analizing to recover partition)
Easeus was nice and showed my files, recover limit was removed PAYING, and I let it recover during hours, only to find ZERO bytes archives.
I will use the money back guarantee with both programs...
2) WIN 8 Upgrade reinstall.
I like many bought Win8 Pro at day 1, the upgrade.
Have reinstalled it a couple of times on same machine (1xhdd failure and 1x hardware upgrade). Never had problems with ACTIVATION.
This time it was no no no. It said "System does not qualify for this version" No phone option.
As I had Win7 on a usbpen and i know it is a vast installation i did that. I did not install the 1000+updates, just activate. Well I have some licences and can't remember with number goes on what pc. Tried one, already in use. Tried another, Maximum installs exceded. No phone option. Use a trick from eightforums.com, that is a refresh. No success. A .bat file, no success. But now it gave my phone option. PHONED, ALL OK.
Now I had to reinstall clean Win 8 Upgrade. Praying to all gods, I installed (with success after all the secure boot and UEFI boot stuff, man is this all rubish), formated my drives.
Automatically 4 partitions created:
boot, reserved, my own particion and another reserved at the end of the drive.
THIS IS NICE, not: later, Samsung Magician says it can NOT create OverPartition partition because there is a partition at the end of the drive, that SUCKS! (My prevision "setup" had that reserved partition elsewhere, and my data partition was the last of the line...) No, I am not going to use Paragon to move partitions....!!
Anyway, installed windows. The driver and patches process began for me.
While installing my stuff, Windows downloaded OVER 100 patches (before even starting with 8.1.)
Restarted, and another load of patches.
Then I saw a boot screen and the text "UPDATING UNSUCCESFULL, REVERTING..."
Well this took 10 restarts and over an hour (in the middle of last night)
After the undoing, it installed again 1000 patches and this time ok.
Than I changed my user profile to the windows account (done that dozens of time on different pcs, so no surprises), and went on setting things up. I set "do not ask for password" and was a bit surprized to see my personal username on one tab and my windows account on another, but didn't change anything.
Went to bed finally.
This morning I entered windows and noticed that I did HAVE ADMIN RIGHTS ANYMORE.
Never have been a guest at home, lol, but noticed I was FCKD.
Had to use Restore Points... after a bit of desperation.
Luckily, I just check and "File history" has saved and I can access my files.
Also luckily I took a day of work, I don't think otherwise I could have managed this or paid someone to do it, like most of the non techsavy do.
As usual, The Descents of Bill Gates surprise you, ALWAYS!!!! No wonder some people do not update, no upgrade, not even enter the Control Panel, only type and print, ... just in case. hahahahaha
Edit: just remembered;
I had to phone for activatin for resintalling Win7, then phone for Win 8, AND THEN TO PHONE FOR MEDIA CENTER EDITION (another key, also "reached activation limit")
3 times in same day, but I must say, the phone activation is one of the few thins THAT WORK!" AAAAH MAMA MAMA!
Edit 2: I even installed Rescue Linux on my laptop, had to edit config files manually to boot it, used its TestDisk tool with my SSD, but no success rescuing partions. Paragon has realy done nice damage! Made in Germany software is not better, thats for sure.
1) DRIVE TOOLS (for a tool like me..) My main drive, a 1TB Samsung SSD, has 2 partitions. I used Paragon Hard Drive Suite Pro (or how it is calleD) 2014 for the 2nd time in my life.
I bought it to go from MBR to GPT disks, and it was a disaster, it looks easy, you click and it says "restart needed" and you never see the program again... nor your drive...
This happened again yesterday. I formated everything except the 2nd partition (with data).
I was unaware that Paragon just LETS YOU DELETE "NO NAME" SMALL PARTITION, THAT IS THE GPT "table"
So again I was without luck, and I tried to recover the particion (i did not format or alter the partitions). I even payed to ESEAUS for their full version (as the Paragon suite didn't fix anything after hourse of "disk analizing to recover partition)
Easeus was nice and showed my files, recover limit was removed PAYING, and I let it recover during hours, only to find ZERO bytes archives.
I will use the money back guarantee with both programs...
2) WIN 8 Upgrade reinstall.
I like many bought Win8 Pro at day 1, the upgrade.
Have reinstalled it a couple of times on same machine (1xhdd failure and 1x hardware upgrade). Never had problems with ACTIVATION.
This time it was no no no. It said "System does not qualify for this version" No phone option.
As I had Win7 on a usbpen and i know it is a vast installation i did that. I did not install the 1000+updates, just activate. Well I have some licences and can't remember with number goes on what pc. Tried one, already in use. Tried another, Maximum installs exceded. No phone option. Use a trick from eightforums.com, that is a refresh. No success. A .bat file, no success. But now it gave my phone option. PHONED, ALL OK.
Now I had to reinstall clean Win 8 Upgrade. Praying to all gods, I installed (with success after all the secure boot and UEFI boot stuff, man is this all rubish), formated my drives.
Automatically 4 partitions created:
boot, reserved, my own particion and another reserved at the end of the drive.
THIS IS NICE, not: later, Samsung Magician says it can NOT create OverPartition partition because there is a partition at the end of the drive, that SUCKS! (My prevision "setup" had that reserved partition elsewhere, and my data partition was the last of the line...) No, I am not going to use Paragon to move partitions....!!
Anyway, installed windows. The driver and patches process began for me.
While installing my stuff, Windows downloaded OVER 100 patches (before even starting with 8.1.)
Restarted, and another load of patches.
Then I saw a boot screen and the text "UPDATING UNSUCCESFULL, REVERTING..."
Well this took 10 restarts and over an hour (in the middle of last night)
After the undoing, it installed again 1000 patches and this time ok.
Than I changed my user profile to the windows account (done that dozens of time on different pcs, so no surprises), and went on setting things up. I set "do not ask for password" and was a bit surprized to see my personal username on one tab and my windows account on another, but didn't change anything.
Went to bed finally.
This morning I entered windows and noticed that I did HAVE ADMIN RIGHTS ANYMORE.
Never have been a guest at home, lol, but noticed I was FCKD.
Had to use Restore Points... after a bit of desperation.
Luckily, I just check and "File history" has saved and I can access my files.
Also luckily I took a day of work, I don't think otherwise I could have managed this or paid someone to do it, like most of the non techsavy do.
As usual, The Descents of Bill Gates surprise you, ALWAYS!!!! No wonder some people do not update, no upgrade, not even enter the Control Panel, only type and print, ... just in case. hahahahaha
Edit: just remembered;
I had to phone for activatin for resintalling Win7, then phone for Win 8, AND THEN TO PHONE FOR MEDIA CENTER EDITION (another key, also "reached activation limit")
3 times in same day, but I must say, the phone activation is one of the few thins THAT WORK!" AAAAH MAMA MAMA!
Edit 2: I even installed Rescue Linux on my laptop, had to edit config files manually to boot it, used its TestDisk tool with my SSD, but no success rescuing partions. Paragon has realy done nice damage! Made in Germany software is not better, thats for sure.
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, but 1) their tools are not intuitive and a forrest of tabs and windows, and 2) they offer compatibility (with win8.1 and with GPT) and I don't believe it is totally true/done. On the contrary, Easeus is simple and until now has helped me often. I myself am also a GPT newbie and would never have expected that it is based on a VISIBLE/DELETABLE partition/table.
