Jo, wouldn't it be nice (or at least the decent thing) if manufacturers clearly stated the means to problem avoidance when the platform must be (re)installed?

In encountering compabable probs. with VISTA, I read so many help forums (for the O/S), and most had ideas that weren't even accurate. I finally stumbled into the solution: installing SP1 before all else. That tidbit could have saved me several days of frustration, that's for sure.

Some good can come from this... and that is: Maybe what we've learned might help others and spare them the frustrations.


The program that worked as beautifully as can be on my fried drive (and RAM): Spotmau PowerSuite Professional 2008: http://www.spotmau.com/

It's reasonably priced and it's worth more than it's price in gold, in light that it truly did do as it claims.

My prob. was when the drive (etc.) fried I was totally caught off guard - no symptoms or anything and no recovery software on-hand for VISTA. I took a risk, I know, in getting SpotMau, yet it sure performed . (If I'm not mistaken, the program also offers a money-back guarantee; I think it extends 30 days.)

I created the emergency boot disc - using SpotMau's instructions - and also ordered the snail mail CD (hard lesson learned long ago, as well).

To use Spotmau - or similar - just be sure to have external media for saving recovered data.