Sharing a DVD burner

[TRexx]

I just bought my sister a new PC. It's a off-lease HP with Windows 7 and a 1 year warranty.  Works great and was cheap ~ $180. The best prt is that it didn't come with a zillion trial version fo products she will never use. I spent the weekend setting it up and installing all her software. I'll deliver it to her this week.

The problem is that I didn't read the fine print. It has a DVD/ROM drive, not a DVD/RW.  She has no use for burning DVDs but I'd like to create a system repair disk.

My PC has a perfectly functioning DVD/RW drive.  Is is possible to share it the same way I share my hard drives?   Windows lets me define a share and I set the permissions just like the hard drive, but the new PC can't see it.

Any ideas? I'd hate to buy a DVD/RW drive I'd use once.

(I thought about temporarily moving the DVD/RW to the new PC, but it's IDE and the new PC has only SATA)

 

[datagirl]

Hi, TRexx.  I'm going to wing it here, because I do not have the set up you describe....

You may be able to create a share to a folder on your hard-drive, back up to that, then burn a copy of the folder to the DVD.  Just a thought, if all else fails.

Good luck, let us know what you end up doing.
-DG

[Richardk]

Great idea. In fact the PC can create an image file that will later be burnt to a disc. So for all practical purposes, that image was created on the PC of interest. [In case it actually makes a difference between burning an image versus just having a shared folder.]

[TRexx]

Unfortunately the process to create a system repair disc seems to want to write to a real R/W CD/DVD drive.

[The Gorn]

I think I know what is going on. A couple of years ago I bought a new HP laptop at Sam's Club (Windows Vista) and the OS wants to burn exactly one set of backup disks. So you only have one opportunity in the lifetime of the installed OS to use their backup routine. So until you are set up with the right hardware and media, you don't want to use the restore disk builder.

As a safety net, I downloaded and installed the free version of "Macrium Reflect", which allows the entire hard drive to be imaged to any storage device.

I would recommend not bothering with the restore disk builder routine right now, and instead just image the hard drive using a free tool. Assuming that the image can be written back out to the same or replacement drive, the image will be essentially the same thing as the product of running a restore disk set.

I mentioned Macrium but there is also Acronis, which is quite good, but is not free.

[Origisaurus]

This might work, if you can find it.  It's been about 7 years (a couple of generations in softaware time).

I have a copy of SuperLink, which consist of  some Explorer-like code you install on each computer of interest plus a null-modem USB cable.

[DarkHumour]

The HP restore process included preparing by making a 'hidden' iso file before burning. Hiding a 7+ gig file wasn't easy).  Before I hit next I copied that file elsewhere so the 'only one backup per machine' is thwarted.  The O/S was Windows XP MCE though...

[TRexx]

I installed the free version of Macrium.  Burned a bootable rescue disc on my other PC.  Works great.  Thanks for the tip.

And now for something completely different:

New PC had 4 memory slots, 2 currently contain 1GB sticks, Type DDR2 (PC5300), Speed 333 Mhz DDR2 667.

I have a soon-to-be-recycled PC that has 2 memory slots each with a 2GB stick, same type & speed.

Can I just install the 2 2Gb sticks to the new PC. giving me a total of 6Gb, or must all the sticks be the same size?
 

[DarkHumour]

The sticks should be the same spec and brand.  You can get away with mixing and matching to some extent but the system will run at the lower rated speed and probably perform erratically when stressed.  I always say that you wouldn't use two or three different brands or types of spark plugs in your car would you ?

Also XP/Vista/7 (32 bit) can only deal with a maximum memory between 3 and 4 gigabytes.  PAE mode could help but that is kind of kludgey at best.

DarkHumour

PS. www.crucial.com can help you determine the maximum amount the motherboard/hardware can physically address.

[TRexx]

The sticks should be the same spec and brand.  You can get away with mixing and matching to some extent but the system will run at the lower rated speed and probably perform erratically when stressed.  I always say that you wouldn't use two or three different brands or types of spark plugs in your car would you ?

Also XP/Vista/7 (32 bit) can only deal with a maximum memory between 3 and 4 gigabytes.  PAE mode could help but that is kind of kludgey at best.

DarkHumour

PS. www.crucial.com can help you determine the maximum amount the motherboard/hardware can physically address.

Thanks. That makes sense.  System is Windows 7 64 bit.  I'll take out the 2 1gb sticks and put in the 2 2gb sticks.