Installation overwrote windows installation too easily

[Ashley Benton]

On Mon, Sep 8, 2008 at 10:57 AM, Bart Silverstrim <bsilver at chrononomicon.com
> wrote:

> James Takac wrote:
> > Hi Ken
> >
> > On Monday 08 September 2008 13:36:57 Ken McLennan wrote:
> >> G'day there One & All,
> >>
> >>>     Alas there is no software I am aware of that can tell the
> difference
> >>> between Windows and any other data on a Hard Drive.
> >>     It doesn't have to determine any differences, nor to find what OSes
> >> are installed anywhere. It needs to halt the process, offer a dialog
> >> with an explicit warning to the user about what will happen and giving
> >> them an opportunity to back out just in case they DO have windows (or
> >> Solaris, or Fedora, or Mandriva, any other OS) installed. It doesn't
> >> matter whether they do or not, but should provide the warning for a
> >> worst case scenario.
> >>
> >>     I doubt it would be difficult, just a dialog with a "Cancel &
> >> Return" option and a "Go Ahead and Nuke" option.
> >>
> >> See ya,
> >> Ken
> >
> >
> > Agreed. What's really needed is a reminder that before anything happens
> just
> > what is going to happen and the chance to turn back. So if it happens
> that
> > your choice means you will delete the entire disk and hence lose
> everything
> > on  it that warning could make all the difference for a newbie. Hell,
> even
> > someone who knows what they're doing can still stuff up big time and so
> the
> > warning would be something that might make the difference regardless of
> > newbie or veteran status
>
> I thought it did give these warnings?
>
> Maybe not something as obvious as WARNING YOU WILL LOSE WINDOWS IF YOU
> HAVE IT INSTALLED but I thought there were warnings about losing your data.
>
> And it's good practice no matter what to back up your data if you have
> important information. I can't count how many people I've known over the
> years that hadn't thought of this until their disk went belly up then
> react as if it's a novel idea afterwards. People who should know better
> don't do it enough either.
>
> Why would someone be playing with a new OS without a backup if their
> data were critical to them?
>
> Last, while you might want these warnings in place...most people will
> still ignore them. I get support calls and requests from people all the
> time who had the instructions or information *on the display in front of
> them* and they still didn't know what to do, when the message was
> surprisingly non-cryptic.
>
> People will click through or hit enter on whatever pops up simply
> because they don't want to deal with it and assume the defaults are
> safe. When you're playing with partitions, there is *NO* safe option.
> You have to resign yourself to the idea that you are risking data and
> need a backup.
>
> --
>
Yes there is a warning. It is a little difficult to understand at least the
first time but you know that if you use the entire hard drive everything
that is already on it is deleted. I guess you could add that Windows is on
the hard drive for the completely not knowledgeable people but they would
certainly press enter no matter what.
And no Ubuntu is not on the hard drive anymore after a complete restore of
Windows. It didn't find its partition and recreate one deleting everything
else. So when I reinstall Windows with the cd I loose Ubuntu (and yes there
is a warning).
No need of solution for loosing Ubuntu the computer is reinstalled about
once a month and empty of files. I think my son think computer=game and will
download anything on it viruses included!
When he will want to use it as a computer I'll look into a solution and
antivirus.
Meg

>
> ubuntu-users mailing list
> ubuntu-users at lists.ubuntu.com
> Modify settings or unsubscribe at:
> https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-users
>
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <https://lists.ubuntu.com/archives/ubuntu-users/attachments/20080908/4ccf60cd/attachment.html>